President Barack Obama may not have spent many years in the political game, but he still has plenty of silky moves. Consider the trap he set for Republicans with the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.
First, he hails the choice as historic, maintains that she brings a fresh perspective because she’s a Hispanic, and depicts her as a benign liberal in the David Souter mold.
Then his henchmen put out the word, swallowed whole by the establishment press, that only right-wing troglodytes could oppose a woman of Sotomayor’s unquestioned virtues.
At the heart of the strategy is a false choice: Republicans could be progressives like Colin Powell or retros like Rush Limbaugh. In other words, could Republicans get over their inner Klansmen and refrain from destroying a Hispanic woman?
“Despite her remarkable personal odyssey, Judge Sotomayor is already being called a liberal activist by some conservative groups,” said Pete Williams on the “NBC Nightly News.” Even though she grew up the daughter of Puerto Ricans in the Bronx, the radical
Right is already on the attack!
I don’t recall that because Justice Samuel Alito grew up the son of Italians in Trenton that any reporters worried about branding him a conservative. I do recall that reporters even futilely scoured citizenship records to test if Alito’s father had been born in Italy as he claimed.
But NBC isn’t exactly credible anymore. It’s hard to shoot straight with a parent company looking to milk the administration through favorable regulations and a news department that has gone hard Left to try to shore up poor ratings.
But across the television spectrum (except FOX News) and in the rivers of newsprint gushing forth from the old-guard papers, the same White House-approved story took shape.
It wasn’t that Republicans would struggle to deal with some of Sotomayor’s flakier positions because of the Obama administration’s calculating use of identity politics. It was that Sotomayor’s background actually gave some Republicans pause, but that they didn’t know how to say so without appearing to have a racist, sexist bias.
“An all-out assault on Sotomayor by Republicans could alienate both Latino and women voters, deepening the GOP’s problems after consecutive electoral setbacks. But sidestepping a court battle could be deflating to the party’s base and hurt efforts to rally conservatives going forward,” read the piece by Shailagh Murray and Michael Shear in Wednesday’s Washington Post.
It’s a variation of a narrative to which the establishment press has become deeply committed in the Obama era — Republicans must choose between a kinder, gentler future and the old, mean, racist base that controls the party.
It’s precisely the line that the hyperpolitical Obama White House has been selling.
With the “Limbaugh runs the GOP” canard hatched by Rahm Emanuel and his Clintonite pals and the snarky swipes at Dick Cheney the administration has successfully sold the idea of a Republican Party doomed because it is held hostage by a radical base.
Even though the effort to use Cheney against the GOP blew up in Obama’s face like a misdirected load of No. 8 birdshot when the subject turned to terrorism, the establishment press corps has followed the White House plan, dutifully carrying out the inquest.
“Which is it -Limbaugh or Powell?”
When the Sunday blabathon sounds like the House Un-American Activities Committee, things have gotten a little off kilter.
The answer for Republicans seems obvious: Just do your job.
In Sotomayor’s case it seems particularly clear.
Americans generally dislike racial preferences, so make Sotomayor explain why she believes a “wise Latina” makes a better judge than a white male.
Maybe ask her to explore the racial continuum of wisdom. Where do Asian males stack up? Black females? How wise is a transgendered American Indian compared with a Latina?
Then, barring a bombshell, the GOP should step aside and let Obama have his pick, which will reinforce the growing understanding that Obama is not post-racial but wedded to the old notions of racial blame and entitlement.
But if the members of the GOP listen to the establishment media channeling the White House, they will decide to treat Sotomayor like a protected citizen.
And guess what, they won’t get a bit of credit for their tolerance.
