Obama is playing the race card very nicely by nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The NYT gleefully declares that Obama has once again proved to be The One by
“choosing a daughter of Puerto Rican parents raised in a Bronx public housing project to become the nation’s first Hispanic justice.”
First of all, justices to the Supreme Court should be nominated on their legal acumen, experience and intellect, not on race, religion, gender or any other factor. NY Senators Schumer and Gillibrand apparently consider only race to be the deciding factor as to who should be nominated. In a letter to Obama, the two claim:
“It’s long overdue that a Latino sit on the United States Supreme Court.”
How about an East Asian justice? How about an actual African American, that is somebody born to African immigrants? What about South Asian? What is special about latinos to nominate one to the court, based essentially on racial preference?
The Senators claim:
“Latinos are a large and growing segment of our society that have gone grossly underrepresented in our legal system.”
Really what they are trying to say is that Latinos vote for Democrats. Latinos vote overwhelming for Obama, Schumer, and all other Democrats, and, hence, they need to be rewarded. Have Asians and Africans not contributed enough to the Democrats lately?
Supreme Court justices fulfill an essential constitutional role, determining the validity of laws and upholding our rights. Race, or any such petty factors, should not even be considered in determining the best candidates for the highest Court of the land. Of course, Obama is the consummate politician and we can’t really expect him to go beyond any political considerations.
What surprised me slightly was that the very liberal New Republic and Jeffrey Rosen have actually published an article against Sotomayor. Naturally, there has to be something amiss in all this. Rosen writes:
“Over the past few weeks, I’ve been talking to a range of people who have worked with her… Most are Democrats … nearly none of them raved about her. They expressed questions about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices, as well as a clear liberal alternative.” (emphasis added)
Ahh, so what he is saying is that Sotomayor may not be able to hold her own against conservative justices and may not be able to provide a reasonable liberal alternative to them. Basically, Rosen wants a strong liberal to be nominated who can bully conservatives into agreeing with him and who can ram through liberal rulings by harassing Kennedy and the other liberals into joining his clique. By bullying, of course, I refer to intellectual persuasiveness, of which Sotomayor has very little, as she is:
“not that smart…her questions aren’t penetrating and don’t get to the heart of the issue”
Rosen’s following quote hits the nail on the head:
“She’s a fine Second Circuit judge–maybe not the smartest ever, but how often are Supreme Court nominees the smartest ever?”
So, basically, Obama’s thinking must be:
“Sotomayor is not the smartest judge I can nominate, but she is a latino! Jackpot!”
Huffington Post, of course, is drooling over Sotomayor. The following points stood out for me:
1. [she] grew up in a public housing project in the South Bronx – so, she will be supportive of more hand-outs and liberal causes
2. Almost all of her career has been in public service — as a prosecutor, trial judge, and now appellate judge. She has almost no money to her name. – not rich, for more hand-outs, for affirmative action, no substantive private/business experience
3. George H. W. Bush appointed Sotomayor to the District Court for the Southern District of New York.- Good God! Can we time machine Bush Sr. out of office?!
4. Sotomayor’s record on two key hot button cultural issues (gay marriage and abortion) is thin – so she very well could be a pinko commie, but, she could be a moderate as well. This probably explains Rosen’s opposition. He’s not sure how Sotomayor will turn out, although she is endorsed by all the right people
5. She ended a long baseball strike that year, briskly ruling against the owners in favor of the players – so, she supports unions like all of those Dems. The National Review puts it succintly:
She is among the most aggressively pro-plaintiff, anti-business appellate judges in the country. Her rulings in class actions, preemption cases, and other commercial matters are of a piece with her contempt for property rights (noted by Richard Epstein) and her anti-employer bias in discrimination cases (a matter of notoriety).
6. Sonia says: “the court of appeals is where policy is made” – so she wants to take over Congress’ job!
I don’t think there was ever any hope that Obama would nominate a reasonable, moderate justice, given his recent record of partisanship and complete disregard of his campaign promise of re-conciliation and change. But Sotomayor is even worse than could be expected – she was nominated simply on basis of her race, and to, some extent, her gender. Her liberal record doesn’t hurt either.
