Give ‘Em Enough Rope
By I have an article up over at Comment Is Free about he Sotomayor nomination. Since her confirmation is (barring unforseen circumstances) inevitable, what matters is the nature of the process itself. And I can only hope that Senate Republicans will follow their pundits and operatives in their noxious attempts to portray a choice as formally well-qualified as any in my lifetime as an unqualified minority:
With respect to Sotomayor’s qualifications, a number of Republican pundits and spokesmen – including Karl Rove – have attempted to argue that Sotomayor was not appointed on the merits but because she was a woman of Puerto Rican descent. These arguments are unlikely to gain traction beyond the most reactionary Republican senators for the obvious reason that they’re absurd, and in some cases come close to outright racism.
Of course, Sotomayor’s compelling life story and background was not irrelevant to her selection – diversity of various kinds (regional, religious, ethnic) has always played a part in the modern supreme court process, on the part of both Democratic and Republican presidents. But her formal qualifications – advancing from poverty in the Bronx to Princeton, editor of the Yale Law Journal and nearly 20 years of distinguished service on the federal courts – are comparable or superior to any recent nominee.
They’re certainly more impressive than those of the conservative icons William Rehnquist, who had never served a day as a judge and had served only about three years as assistant attorney general, and Clarence Thomas, who had been a judge for less than two years, although he had been head of an important federal agency for eight.
Attempts to portray a nominee whose qualifications are remarkably similar to the most recently confirmed justice (Samuel Alito, also a Princeton and Yale Law graduate) as unworthy of the court are more likely to damage politically those making the arguments than Sotomayor’s nomination prospects.
I also have some arguments about how the Dems should approach the process.