Supreme Court Kabuki Watch

Oh, Kevin, you are so naive. The Republican objective here is to derail the nomination - it does not matter one whit who the nominee is or how well qualified. What matters is that the minority can create enough noise to seem to have power. If they seem to have power, then they do have power. The President could have nominated Oliver Wendell Holmes. The Republicans would have objected. The news media would have told us that this was a "controversial choice."

Oh, Kevin, you are so naive. The Republican objective here is to derail the nomination - it does not matter one whit who the nominee is or how well qualified. What matters is that the minority can create enough noise to seem to have power. If they seem to have power, then they do have power. The President could have nominated Oliver Wendell Holmes. The Republicans would have objected. The news media would have told us that this was a "controversial choice."

Kevin, a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land is "something important". No president should expect a rubber stamp approval of his nominee, no matter how qualified she is for the job.

Oh, but wait, first she has to prove she won't put her "feelings" ahead of the law. Because, apparently, there is a huge open question as to whether a sitting appellate court justice thinks it's appropriate to set aside case law and rule with her "feelings." In fact, according to the statements of the minority leader, Orrin Hatch, and a whole pile of other Republicans yesterday, that is the CENTRAL concern they have. Interestingly, I don't remember Republicans raising concerns about being irrationally led by one's "feelings" when it was Scalia, or Alito, or, uh, anyone else being confirmed. Interestingly, there was a presumption of rationality in those cases that they don't seem willing to afford a sitting appellate court judge. According to the Republicans, she has to prove she doesn't rule with her feelings. Because, again, they have assumed for no apparent reason that she does. It's unbelievable. And frankly, I think it's a sign of too few women and Latinos in our media landscape that Republican leaders think it's acceptable to baselessly accuse a Latina of legislating from her "feelings" rather than the law, and to then demand she prove otherwise.

The "We're Not Them" Industrial Complex of Think Tanks and PACs will happily (both sides) fuel the "controversy" of Obama's selection for as long as they can print out bogus surveys attached to fund raising letters to keep their organizations chugging along. What is more interesting to watch are the angry white men and the GOP, but I repeat myself, as they continue to self destruct. The prudent course of action here is to realize that Obama won Hispanics by 85% and play your hand accordingly. What gain, since her nomination is all but imminent, would they receive for holding hearings full of vitriol and questioning her rise to this opportunity as nothing more than affirmative action and she herself a racist? And though Obama polled poorly with white woman they'll also do themselves no service by repeatedly attacking her on what is essentially trumped up charges. Joan Welsh will be leading the sexism charge at full speed. But they just can't help themselves, can they? It's another assault on the "white man citadel" and every reflexive core of their being says counter attack, Neanderthalish as that strategy maybe. Don't get me wrong, I am all for exposure. I have no legal background and so I think it helpful for me and other legal laymen like me to have her record nitpicked and presented to us, though I prefer to have it presented as 'here is the case, here is how she ruled' without the added this is why you should think it is good or bad thrown in. I'll make that own decision for myself. And yeah, a little background is fine, I don't need to know if she sleeps on a first date but if she, during her days at Princeton, was say a radical Puerto Rican nationalist, it would be nice to know. But what the GOP will do is not attack her judicial record (perhaps because initial reports seem it is quite vanilla and lacks controversy) but her race, her gender, cherry picked sentences, the term empathy (um, which was used by GHWB when nominating Clarence Thomas) and other things that don't play well in the xenophobic, pseudo hyper masculine, Anglocentric, perpetually angry world view which is the current GOP. And so they reduce their existing and potential membership even more (one can already see the Spanish language ad campaigns for 2010 quoting Republican leaders decrying her as an affirmative action recipient in the swing states out West). One more coffin in the nail. So let them howl, in fact, encourage it.