I know posting has sort of fallen off a cliff these past few months, and I’ve got a long post in my head about why that is– and let me tell you, it’s fascinating. While you wait with baited breath for that update, however, check out Julian Sanchez on the dangerous optics of Republican opposition to Sotomayor for the Supreme Court:
Look, it’s not racist to oppose a Latina judicial nominee, or to oppose affirmative action, or to point out genuine evidence of ethnic bias on the part of minorities. What we’re seeing here, though, is people clinging to the belief that Sotomayor has to be some mediocrity who struck the ethnic jackpot, that whatever benefit she got from affirmative action must be vastly more significant than her own qualities, that she’s got to be a harpy boiling with hatred for whitey, however overwhelming the evidence against all these propositions is. This is really profoundly ugly. Like Yglesias, I don’t think I’m especially sensitive to stuff like this, or particularly easily moved to anger, but I’m angry. I don’t think Republican pundits really appreciate the kind of damage they’re probably doing, for no reason I can discern given the slim odds of actually blocking the nomination. Which, perhaps, goes to Sotomayor’s point: They really have no idea how they sound to anyone else.
He’s no lefty, but somehow I don’t think that will earn him any points with the Good Ol’ Boy wing of the Republican Party (which is the only wing, at this point).
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