Some columns are easier to write than others.

This is one of them.

Providing all of my research were the “family values” Republicans.

This week, second term Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina disappeared for six days, leaving the state without a chief executive who could make decisions in an emergency. His Republican lieutenant governor didn’t know where he was, and had not been given any authority to make decisions in his absence. The state police said they had not been informed. His wife told the Associated Press she didn’t know where he was, wasn’t worried about him, and thought he was “writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids” over the Father’s Day weekend. His senior aides said he was walking along the Appalachian Trail to “clear his head.”

But it wasn’t his head that he was clearing. When he returned, after first lying to a reporter for the Columbia State who caught up with him on his return to the Atlanta airport, he finally admitted he went to Argentina to meet with a long-time lover. His wife, who was not by his side when he held an early afternoon press conference, later said she and the governor had separated two weeks earlier. The State later produced e-mail love letters it had been keeping since December.

The rising young star of the Republican party who was seen as a presidential contender in 2012, the man who was head of the Republican Governors Association until the day after he acknowledged his extramarital affair, the man who had wanted to deprive his state of $700 million in federal stimulus funds as a political message to President Obama, the man who had established himself as a beacon for the sanctity of marriage and the values of the oh-so-pure Religious right, was not only an adulterer, but for at least the second time had left his state at risk since there were no contingency plans of how to reach him in an emergency.

Alas, Gov. Sanford isn’t the only “family values” philanderer. Slightly more than a week earlier, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) admitted he had a nine month extramarital affair with one of his campaign staff. Ensign, who was contemplating a run for president in 2012, had been chair of the Republican Policy Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Like Gov. Sanford, Sen. Ensign only admitted to the affair after information had been leaked to the media.

This is the same John Ensign who, as a congressman, had curled his lips in revulsion at Bill Clinton’s affair, and demanded he either resign or be impeached. “He has no credibility,” Ensign told the Las Vegas Review–Journal in 1998. Six years later, now a senator, Ensign supported a federal ban on same sex marriages by declaring, “Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded . . . . [M]arriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation.” Ironically, Ensign is active in Promise Keepers, an evangelical group.

Also vigorously calling for President Clinton’s impeachment, while having had their own extramarital affairs and covering them up or lying about them, were:

● Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chair of the House judiciary committee and the “house manager” for the impeachment, who lied about his own four-year affair with a married woman and then when a newspaper published details in 1998 called the affair in the 40s nothing more than a “youthful indiscretion.” He retired in 2007 after 17 terms in the House.

●Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), who was the first legislator in Congress to call for Clinton’s resignation and then became one of the leaders of the impeachment movement. Barr’s background, however, wasn’t family values pure. He never denied committing adultery with his second wife, and later, while married to his third wife, was photographed at what passed as a charity event licking whipped cream off the breasts of two women. Barr left office in 2003, after four terms.

● Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho), who was one of the first to call for Clinton’s resignation, told the Spokane Spokesman-Review that God had pardoned her sins for her six-year extra-marital affair. Chenoweth left office in January 2001 after keeping her promise not to serve more than three terms.

● Fourteen term Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind), chair of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, who not only had a long-time affair with a state employee but had fathered a son from that affair. His website once screamed, “Above all, Dan Burton believes the people have a right to principled leadership and that character does matter.”

● Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), who told Tim Russert on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” in 1999 that “The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy—a naughty boy. I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.” However, Craig himself was a “bad boy.” In September 2007 he pleaded guilty, and then tried to withdraw his conviction on charges that he solicited a man in the Minneapolis–St. Paul airport. Several gay men later told the Idaho Statesman that Craig, who was married since 1983, had previously tried to solicit them or had sexual relations with them. Craig resigned in September 2007, and then reversed himself, staying in office through 2008. He did not run for re-election.

● Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), House speaker from 1995 to 1999, who may have had an affair while his first wife was in the hospital recovering from cancer. Gingrich later cheated on his second wife with the woman who became his third wife during the time he was pushing for Clinton’s resignation.

● Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), who was Gingrich’s designated successor until he admitted his own infidelities and eventually resigned from the House.

● Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who was elected to Livingston’s House seat and served three terms before being identified in a prostitution scandal in Louisiana. In 2004, he was elected to the Senate, three years before Hustler magazine linked him as a client of a prostitution service in Washington, D.C.

● Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Pa), who had a five year affair with a woman 35 years his junior. She later charged that Sherwood had assaulted her several times. He eventually settled for what AP reported was about $500,000. Among those who supported Sherwood during his primary re-election were Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), one of the leaders of the conservative coalition who in November 2005 said that “Compassionate Conservatism relies on healthy families,” and President George W. Bush who went to northeastern Pennsylvania to help raise funds for Sherwood. However, in the general election of November 2006, Sherwood was defeated for a fifth term.

Add to the list of morally bankrupt Republicans:

● Five term Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) who resigned in September 1995, three years before the Clinton impeachment, after the bipartisan Ethics Committee unanimously recommended his expulsion following charges of sexual abuse and assault by 10 women, most of them either former staffers or lobbyists.

● Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), a six-term congressman, and co-chair of the Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus, who had sent sexually explicit e-mails and text messages to a 16 year-old male Congressional page. Foley resigned in September 2006, two months before the general election, long after the Republican leadership had failed to discipline him, and only after a blog (stopsexpredators.blogspot.com) and ABC-TV news exposed his hoped-for affairs may have included other staff dating back at least a decade.

● Rep. Robert E. Bauman (R-Md.), publicly homophobic founder of Young Americans for Freedom and the American Conservative Union, who admitted he had solicited sex with a 16 year old male. Bauman lost the general election in 1980 and later declared himself to be gay.

● Rep. Donald Lukens (R-Ohio), who was convicted in 1989 of a misdemeanor for having sex with a 16-year-old girl. The “affair” may have begun three years earlier. Lukens finally resigned in October 1990, after having lost the Republican primary several months earlier.

Republican leaders aren’t the only ones who commit adultery, nor are conservatives or members of the Religious Right, including preachers, solely the ones to have violated the seventh and tenth Commandments. But, it is the “family values” Republican leaders, who have led the party of right wing moral indignation; it is the Religious Right that has overtaken the party and wears the now-tarnished shield of righteousness to protect itself against anyone who doesn’t share their own views of the world, including moderate and liberal Republicans, and anyone belonging to another political party.

The hypocrisy and moral turpitude of the leaders is just one reason why only 21 percent of Americans identify themselves as Republicans.

[Walter M. Brasch is a university professor of journalism, social issues columnist, and the author of 17 books. His current book is Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush, available from amazon.com, bn.com, and other stores. You may contact him through his website, www.walterbrasch.com]

Certainly any self-respecting blogger cannot refrain from writing about the biggest story in the news, the demise of the marriage of Jon and Kate, parents of eight cute little darlings. And I’ve got the scoop. Jon had an affair, then they went out with friends Adam and Steve, Kate got the payback thing going and wanted to do some good old fashioned swapping, like in that old movie, and Jon just couldn’t handle it. Divorce ensued, playing havoc with the TV ratings for TLC. First TLC gets MONGO ratings, then the put the Jon and Kate sans Jon show on hiatus. The world has now stopped revolving, and we are yet to hear from the Southern Baptist Convention.

The conventional wisdom is that Jon and Kate Gosselin, the parents of oodles of kids who have kept America in AWWW for years, have seperated because Jon was hanging out in bars and straying with waitresses. Or maybe Kate was doing the nasty with the bodyguard. Whateva! Jon had come upon the middle aged crazy thing early, or the stresses of multiple rugrats was getting to him, or somesuch nonsense. Or maybe Kate just wanted a little extra, if you know what I mean. But I’m here to break the big news, that the whole divorce thing is all because of teh gay. And I’m sure the Southern Baptist Convention could have prevented all this.

There’s the big question. Does the church the Gosselin’s attend, play a role in this? I’m not saying that Glad Tidings Assemby of God Chruch in West Lawn, PA is accepting of gay parisioners, but I’m not seeing that they’ve gone far enough to condemn teh gay in order to save Jon and Kate’s marriage. Oh the Horror! All those kids having to negotiate shared custody the rest of their lives! Glad Tidings Senior Pastor Bryan D. Koch better watch out for his own marriage, though. Just as “Jon” is teh gay spelling of “John,” a fine biblical name, so is “Bryan” a gay bastardization of the name of that important biblical figure “Brian.” There’s some fooling around going on here, and even the spellings of names can lead to teh gay and the end of marriages in divorces.

The Souther Baptist Convention has it right, though. It isn’t enough for a church to refuse to welcome members who are gay, nor is it enough for them to refuse to publish pictures of gay couples for their directory. Heck, refusing to publish pictures of heterosexual couples will get a congregation kicked out of the Souther Baptist Convention. That’s what happened to Broadway Baptist Church in the steamy, gay-ridden hotbed of Fort Worth, TX. The fine upstanding folks at Hepzibah Baptist over in Wendell, NC dropped the dime on Broadway, and they refused to bend over to pick it up, instead insisting that Broadway be kicked out of the SBC! Oh, sure, there is whining out there that this is all about some whiney internet rumor and innuendo, but we all know what the real cause here is, just as we know it in the case of the Gosselin divorce, that teh gay is insidious and will get even a fine church like Broadway Baptist.

I can’t close this little rambling assault on teh gay and marriage and couples who pop them out like a Pez container without mentioning that Monica Yant Kinney is also to blame. In her most recent column Ms. Kinney slyly makes fun of the theory that gay marriage will lead to people marrying their lawn mowers. That kind of attitude is what leads to events like the Gosselin divorce, which likely will be seen soon as a Broadway musical (not affiliated with Browday Baptist Church). And I am still not buying tickets.

Hey, this is how to sell some newsprint — a columnist with some attitude! Congrats on a great column, Ronnie Polanczky. You skewer John Ensign sweetly.

So, is that the way to save newspapers, though, to serve up commentary with far more attitude than is done now? Pretending to be neutral about the news just encourages papers like the Philadelphia Inquirer to bend over backwards to recruit voices on the conservative side, and with John Yoo they have failed. Still, they could choose snarky conservatives, as the resultant commentaries don’t include the dishonesty, straw men and obsessiveness of a Rick Santorum. Today Santorum is on his Islamofascist horse, getting in digs at Obama along the way. “Balance” will not save print journalism, but lively and honest commentary like that of Ronnie Polanczky just might.

Senator John Ensign (R-NV) has admitted an affair with one of his campaign workers. As is often the case in such matters, his wife is saying of this episode that their “marriage has become stronger.” The story is all over the media, and here it is from the Washington Post:

Sen. John Ensign (Nev.), considered a rising star in the Republican Party, yesterday acknowledged an extramarital affair with a former campaign staffer who is married to one of the lawmaker’s former legislative aides.

Ensign, a member of the Senate Republican leadership, disclosed the affair at a hastily arranged news briefing in Las Vegas, his home town. He flew home yesterday morning after informing GOP leaders on Capitol Hill of his impending announcement, missing a vote on tourism legislation considered important to Nevada’s casino industry.

The news was the latest setback for a party that suffered losses of at least 13 Senate seats in the past two elections and saw Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) defect to the Democrats in April. Any further instability in their ranks is unwelcome news for Republicans, who viewed Ensign as a telegenic communicator who could deliver the conservative message on political talk shows in a congenial matter.

Politico identifies the woman with whom Senator Ensign had the affair, suggesting the announcement by Ensign about the affair was triggered by a demand for money by the husband of the woman:

But current and former aides to the Nevada Republican say the woman was 46-year-old Cynthia Hampton, a campaign staffer whose husband was a top aide in Ensign’s Senate office.

“It was known in [Ensign’s] inner circle that they were involved,” a former aide told POLITICO.

Hampton served as the treasurer for Ensign’s reelection campaign and for his leadership fund, Battle Born PAC. According to people familiar with the matter, Ensign’s affair with Hampton took place between December 2007 and August 2008. FEC records show that she ended her affiliation with the two committees in early 2008.

Hampton is married to Douglas Hampton, who, according to Senate records, served as Ensign’s administrative assistant in his personal office from November 2006 to May 2008 — around the same time Cynthia Hampton left Ensign’s committees.

A call to the Hamptons’ Las Vegas home Tuesday night was not returned; in a statement, Ensign’s wife said the situation has “been difficult on both families.”

Douglas Hampton was paid about $101,000 in 2008 and $144,000 in 2007 as Ensign’s administrative assistant. But a financial disclosure form he filed in 2007 and 2008 – required for senior congressional staffers - showed only checking and savings account worth a maximum $30,000 combined.

A review of public records shows that the Hamptons in 2006 took out a $1.2 million mortgage on their Las Vegas home, at an interest rate of 8 percent.

Political insiders in Nevada and in the Senate said that Ensign decided to acknowledge the affair publicly after the husband of the woman he had been seeing asked him for a substantial sum of money.

Yes, this is sordid, but to the Republicans credit this is not a boy he had an affair with, nor was it an assignation in a public restroom.

I’m guessing Ensign will move out of the Republican leadership and scrap his prospective campaign for President. He also will not be representing conservative Republican values on TV anytime soon. His campaigning for the sanctity of marriage on the Senate floor is now suspect, to say the least, as is Ensign’s opposition to ethics investigations of former Republican Senator Larry Craig. Perhaps Mr. Ensign should have attended to the sanctity of his own marriage rather than worrying that gay marriage might destroy it. And perhaps there was a reason he didn’t want Larry Craig’s case investiagted. One thing for sure, we’ll not find such speculation in the national media, as they will treat this as a solemn mea culpa and move on.

Senator Ensign is a member of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, a sect founded by Aimee Semple McPherson back in the 20’s. Miss McPherson was famous for affairs, even one reputedly with Milton Berle, who had a fairly famous attribute. Her life is supposedly the inspiration for the book and film Elmer Gantry. Maybe Ensign will not be shunned within his faith community for a simple affair. Who knows? It is too early to tell whether Republicans will blame Ensign’s failure on Elmer Gantry or gay marriage.

It is from the National Review Online’s The Corner, by Mike Potemra, who apparently lives int he state of denial:

Four years from now, Mitt Romney will be president of the United States.

My reasoning is as follows. Point One: The Obama team, while still basking in honeymoon-level approval ratings today, has pointed itself in a direction that will result in disappointed hopes for the American people. They have drastically overpromised, and their policies — even if they are not outright disastrous — will end up inciting more passionate discontent than passionate support. Point Two: The Republicans always nominate for president the candidate who’s next in line, even if that person is deeply unpopular (e.g., the GOP base’s hatred for John McCain did not prevent him from being nominated; he was the guy who lost to Bush in 2000, ergo…). In 2008, the runner-up was Romney. Add to that frontrunner status the fact that Romney has credibility on economics and budgeting, and he’s the prohibitive favorite. Add Point One to Point Two, and the result is a Romney presidency.

Mike Poterma’s first point is easily addressed. Some Americans have already soured on Obama’s policies, but they are the ones who call in “Hussein” and are campaigning over at WingNutDaily for citizen tribunals to try Obama on the birther thing. That’s the problem with Poterma’s second point. The people he is counting on are far too wingnutty to go for Romney over Palin or Huckabee or any number of GOP candidates in the wingnut parade. No, the Republicans have some hard lessons to learn, and one is that the wingnuts are in charge right now, led by Rush Limbaugh, who is not a Mitt Romney fan.

Sure, Mitt Romney is photogenic, and might win a pageant, but he’s had liberal views in the past and the religious right and conspiracy theory driven wingnuts aren’t going for Romney.

Poterma is in denial. His past working for Reagan, Kasten, Durenberger and DeWine show he is a relatively moderate Republican. Evidently he’s not clinging to God and guns, but an outdated notion of the Republican Party as a Reagan Party. It is not, and won’t be until the GOP addresses some hard realities about the wingnuts in their midst.

Newt Gingrich yesterday spoke at a church in a forum entitled “Rediscovering God in America”. Mike Huckabee was there to speak as well. Newt, however, stole the show with his usual hyperbole. This time Newt fears that the Christianity that makes America great is beset on all sides by paganism! Run, run, the Pagans are coming! Here’s a bit from the Virginia Pilot:

Two leading voices of the Republican Party’s evangelical wing visited Rock Church on Friday for a forum aimed at recapturing some of the movement’s political momentum.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee urged Christians to get involved in politics to preserve the presence of religion in American life.

“I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history,” Gingrich said. “We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism.”

Of course there is a chorus of other voices commenting about Gingrich’s rich, rich characterization of his personal fear. Mike Silva at The Swamp notes the speeches were an exercise in motivating the extremist right wing Christian base of the GOP. And Avenging Angel of DailyKos comments mostly about Mike Huckabee’s thanking God for his failed campaign for the Presidency. Odd, that Huckabee, eh?

But I want to examine Newt’s fear of pagans, and what it means for Christians everywhere. It means there will be no more Christmas trees, no more Yule logs, and no more Easter eggs. Those are pagan rituals incorporated in Christian traditions, but pagan to their core. Newt knows this, as he is reknowned for his firm grasp of history. Indeed, the Christmas date of December 25th is the date celebrated first as the birth of Mithras, and the word “Easter” comes from Ishtar, a Babylonian goddess. Newt knows all of this, that’s for sure. Clearly what Newt Gingrich means to do is erase all vestiges of paganism in America, which means he intends to take away our Christmas trees. This may be a stealth campaign of Newt’s that Christians will not recognize for what it is, but this is the real War on Christmas, not the fake one Bill O’Reilly warned us about.

The pagans are coming, and they are us, Newt is really saying. And he wants your Christmas tree.

As for those of us who celebrate Hanukah, Newt is not addressing us at this time. Perhaps he will come out against candles next week.

Scott Roeder, the terrorist who murdered George Tiller several days ago, is calling the press and telling them there will be more attacks by people we must assume are terrorist associates of his. From the AP wire:

Scott Roeder called The Associated Press from the Sedgwick County jail, where he’s being held on charges of first-degree murder and aggravated assault in the shooting of Dr. George Tiller one week ago.

“I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal,” Roeder said. When asked by the AP what he meant and if he was referring to another shooting, he refused to elaborate further.

The AP story says the head of Operation Rescue claims Scott Roeder is “a fruit and a lunatic,” but makes no comments on the fact that Roeder had the phone number of his Senior Advisor Cheryl Sullenger in his car when he was apprehended. As mentioned in an earlier column, Sullenger is a convicted terrorist from a bombing of a clinic she participated in in 1988. Perhaps Operation Rescue is going to come under some close scrutiny that will reveal they employ active terrorists.

No word on whether Dick Cheney is readying the waterboard.

News reports concerning the apprehension of Scott Roeder, the domestic terrorist charged with shooting Dr, George Tiller in his church Sunday, note that he had a post-it note on his steering wheel with the phone number at Operation Rescue’s headquarters. That phone number belongs to Cheryl Sullenger, the senior policy advisor at Operation Rescue. Cheryl Sullenger was convicted in 1988 of bombing an abortion clinic. Here’s her comments about her association with yesterday’s terrorist, Scott Roeder, from The Pitch in Kansas City:

Sullenger tells The Pitch that she hasn’t spoken with Roeder recently.

“No, he hasn’t called me recently,” Sullenger said. “No.”

She went on: “You know, he’s somebody who’s been around. My name is on the Internet. It’s on every press release. My phone number is on every press release it. It’s all over the internet. I don’t know. He probably has lots of people’s phone numbers. You know? So I don’t know. I don’t have any more comment other than that.”

That sure seems like a nondenial denial to me. There are two parts to the issue here, at least. First, Operation Rescue intentionally hired a person who had committed terrorist acts in the past in order to have that person help direct policy. That’s not going to look good in an investigation. Further, this convicted terrorist, Cheryl Sullenger, was in contact with a man who had once been arrested transporting a bomb in his car. Then he ends up actually committing an act of terrorism in a church. Man, it is time to bring out RICO to sort out the terrorists and who knew whom here. I’m thinking one of them might even be able to link Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden, though I do not advocate torture to help us find out.

It appears the domestic terrorist who gunned down Dr. George Tiller at the door of his church this morning has been caught. His name is Scott Philip Roeder. There are stories spreading throughout the internet, many of which are backed by google cache pages from Operation Rescue’s web site, that show Scott Roeder to be active in the organization’s harrassment of Dr. Tiller. Daily Kos has some of the evidence here and here, and there will surely be more evidence linking Roeder to Operation Rescue. One TV station is reporting that Roeder had Operation Rescue’s phone number on a post-it note on his dash.

Last night many people in Wichita gathered to honor Dr. George Tiller and to mourn, but Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, made a statement that has some pretty ugly overtones. It may be the case that Terry has it right, though, as he seems to worry more about the reaction of the Obama Administration than he does about a fellow human who is dead. Barack Obama has recently and famously called for less rancor in the abortion debate in his speech at Notre Dame, trying to find a peaceful middle ground, and it is my bet that Americans are with him for the most part. To that end there will be pressure from the public and from law enforcement on the people who influenced Scott Roeper in perpetrating this act. Number one on the FBI hit parade will be Operation Rescue, but the public will be upset with all of those on the extremist right, such as Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter, who consistently use the inflammatory rhetoric of the anti-choice movement, words like “babykiller” and the like.

Of course Operation Rescue itself is running scared. Mark Hendricks, a columnist with the Kansas City Star, is up front in connecting all of the extremists on the anti-choice side with moral responsibility for the murder of Dr. George Tiller, but Operation Rescue itself seems to know its culpability. In the last day they have scrubbed the web pages designed to foment harrassment of Dr. Tiller from its web site. There is also suspicion that they have attempted to scrub domestic terrorist Scott Roeper’s participation from their web site. These are futile efforts, and it is likely that law enforcement has already impoounded their servers and are going over their membership records. Yes, Operation Rescue is in potential legal trouble more than they have ever been. This isn’t any minor protest infraction in front of a Women’s Health Clinic, but a murder in the front door of a church in front of people gathered for worship. That image isn’t going to sit well with law enforcement or the American public.

The Republican Party is also in trouble, but in this case it is not legal trouble. They recently brought the subject of Dr. Tiller front and center in the Kathleen Sibelius confirmation hearings, delaying the HHS Secretary from confronting the Swine Flu outbreak. That likely appeased the whack job Republican base on the religious extremism end of things, and I’m sure the Republicans were looking forward to making abortion a centerpiece in the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor. Those plans have likely changed. The Republicans will be less likely to heartily grill Judge Sotomayor on the topic of abortion now that the anti-choice crowd has one of their own in jail for domestic terrorism. Instead they will focus on RICO and its application to combatting domestic terrorism.

There’s the problem for Republicans, that they have already lost millions of independent voters because of the way the extremists have ruled their policy formation. Now one of those extremist groups has incubated a homegrown terrorist in the heartland. Oh what’s the matter with Kansas? Nothing, really, except the injection of Operation Rescue to incite stalking and violence and murder by nutjobs. More independents will likely look askance at the Republican Party, and I’m thinking most of those GOP Senators are not as stupid as they look. They’re going to steer away from questions about Roe v. Wade at Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings, but they’ll still snipe around the edges, in this case asking about applications of RICO laws.

The Sotomayor confirmation hearings have shifted focus starting today. First, the right wing whack jobs will relegate Sonia Sotomayor to the back pages because of the George Tiller shooting and this case of domestic terrorism in service to a cause Republicans have always supported. The GOP powers that be are going to have to tread very carefully to distance themselves without wholly abandoning the extremist religious right, the ones who support Operation Rescue with money and volunteers. Nobody wants to look like they support the Fred Phelps of the world, who was out protesting at the vigil for Dr. Tiller last night, but that’s the risk here for Republicans. The risk, frankly, is showing their true face, showing the world that they are aligned with these domestic terrorists.

The Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee will therefore not confront Roe v. Wade at those confirmation hearings, and I’m guessing they will instead focus on terrorism law, but even there it will be sticky going, as they do not want to appear to be questioning the trial and punishment of domestic terrorist Scott Roeper. Oh, this is going to be very good. Remember, the GOP has given Jeff Sessions the lead role in that questioning, and he’s a good friend to extremists on the religious right. He’s also a loose cannon. Yes, this could be a very interesting summer.

Let’s see. So far Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich have claimed Sonia Sotomayor is a racist. Yes, the pulled out the race card they are so fond of claiming liberals use. I suppose it is important to note that one Republican, John Cornyn, has labelled such an attack as “terrible.” From NPR:

Sen. John Cornyn tonight repudiated the allegation that Judge Sonia Sotomayor is “racist” - and he distanced himself in no uncertain terms from the conservative opinion leaders who leveled that charge against the Supreme Court nominee, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

“I think it’s terrible. This is not the kind of tone that any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advice and consent,” Cornyn told NPR’s “All Things Considered.”

. . .

Asked by NPR if he’s worried that comments like Limbaugh and Gingrich’s harm the confirmation debate, Cornyn said: “Neither one of these men are elected Republican officials. I just don’t think it’s appropriate and I certainly don’t endorse it. I think it’s wrong.”

We should expect John Cornyn to apologize to Rush Limbaugh in the next couple of days, but he represents reality. Right Wing commentator Mark Halperin is right that the Republicans will not succeed in stopping Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court from being confirmed. No, charges of racism won’t work, and neither will the insinuations that Sotomayor, a graduate of Princeton and Yale Law with high honors at both fine institutions, is an intellectual lightweight. They’ve also claimed she is an activist liberal judge, legislating from the bench, but as Eugene Robinson notes, that’s also a false charge. Heck, the whack job Christian conservatives screamed that Sotomayor was a pro-abortion activist without mentioning the two decisions by Sotomayor supporting the anti-abortion side of the issue. That isn’t going to work either.

There’s already a lot of fringe folks talking about how Sotomayor is ugly, or a closet leftist, or both, as referenced briefly on Powerline. But this is all really about Republicans energizing the base with the hopes of energizing their fundraising in the near future. That might seem a good goal for them, if it isn’t also a tactic that will alienate women and Hispanic voting blocs. Yeah, that’s the trap Obama has set nominating a Latina with stellar qualifications, and the Republicans seem to be walking right into the trap. And they’ll attack on several more fronts. As previewed by the New York Times this morning, the GOP will likely go after Sotomayor based on her temperament, which is, of course, a sexist attack, and on her associations with advocacy groups, which will likely anger the Hispanic electorate even more.

My question is why hasn’t a Republican accused Sotomayor of being a lesbian yet? Certainly they know the gay issue energized the base in California by both getting out the vote and garnering fundraising dollars during the Prop 8 fight last fall. Sotomayor is divorced and lives in the village. Seems a no-brainer, no matter that there isn’t a scintilla of fact behind such an accusation. With a challenge to national marriage laws coming from the odd couple of Theodore Olson and David Boies, the issue will be in the news for the foreseeable future. If they could claim Sotomayor is a lesbian, then they’ve got a winner of a fundraising issue, and what does the GOP care about offending gay and lesbian citizens, or Obama, or liberals?

How will they make such a claim? I’m betting the first claim will come from a media whack job like Savage or O’Reilly, then will be talked about in the mainstream news for several days. After all, when a GOP whack job speaks, it becomes news. See, Cheney, Dick. The claim will come about five days before the Senate Judicial Committee hearings to confirm Sonia Sotomayor are scheduled. The whack job extremist world that is the Republican base will scream and fret and send in their dollars to the GOP, and the Republican Senators will get to grandstand on the issue of marriage, encouraged, perhaps, by that latest Gallup poll, ignoring other polls, of course. What they won’t have figured out is that in addition to alienating women and Hispanic voting blocs, they will then alienate the young even further. But I’m not giving the GOP credit for smarts.