Good to know Obama doesn’t pay mind to bullshit rumours and fearmongering. I highly doubt as Obama said in his speech that this will be a bi-partisan process. The Republicans are going to go at her guns blazing. She will be confirmed however, provided Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh can be kept in line. And seeing as she will be confirmed, if Republicans want to come out looking good at all from this, they should immediately drop the talking point that she is an “intellectual lightweight,” and “Obama’s Harriet Miers.”
I know it’s nothing new for Republicans to sound prejudiced, but they need to get it into their heads that this is why moderate conservatives dislike them. Sotomayor grew up in the Bronx, went to Princeton and Yale, and was editor of the Yale Law Review. When Republicans call her “dumb and obnoxious,” and say she was nominated simply for being a woman and hispanic, it sounds ugly. It sounds untrue, and people aren’t going to like it.
I can see them getting somewhere with the argument that she’s too in favour of affirmative action, cause even moderate liberals are on the bubble of that subject. But that’s a difficult argument for the Republicans to make without veering into the personal, and claiming that she is an affirmative-action nominee. They’re going to be under a lot of flack from conservative pressure groups, but Senators Orrin Hatch and Jeff Sessions have promised that they won’t fillibuster unless of “exceptional circumstances.” So we’ll see what happens.
But in the end, she will likely be confirmed. And the Supreme Court will be one step closer to equality.
