Diogenes has hit the nail squarely upon the head with this statement
For a long time now there has been a certain type of white politician who has opposed all manner of programs which benefit minorites and for that have been labeled as “racist” by their opponents. I imagine they bristle and resent the accusation since - in their mind - they are not members of the Klan, have not lynched anyone (at least lately) and have even employed minority domestic help around the house, albeit for lower than minimum wage and no benefits. Now its their time to wage the charge of RACISM against those who they have been dying to get back at for several decades.
Not saying that her ethnicity is horrible, but alleging that this highly experienced, Princeton honors student is merely an affirmative action case. :rolleyes: Yeah, that’s really going to ingratiate the on-the-fence hispanic voters.
That’s not a “cite”, that’s a link. I’d like to see cites saying “her ethnicity is horrible”. Because those links do not say that and I am not about to read with a fine tooth comb to see if anything could remotely be interpreted that way. Let’s have a cite. (I just cannot imagine there would be such an instance, much less widespread to all “the right”. )
I think this is the salient point to take away. Whatever benefit the appointment itself brings is dwarfed by the Republicans reacting and doing more to drive away Hispanics. They’re actually being relatively restrained and it’s great - for America, I guess - that people like Cornyn are rebuking the likes of Gingrich and Limbaugh. But you still have Gingrich and Limbaugh calling her a racist (or a reverse-racist, whatever the hell that is). So it’s just a question of how obnoxious they get.
One of them is simply a commentary on the pronunciation of her last name. Obama has used 2 different versions, so which should we use? Oh! The Hate mongering!
Probably not all that much, unless the GOP goes above and beyond the call of dickery in opposition, in which case they’ll lose what ground they’ve gained in that demographic.
Pretty amusing. Regardless of whether the attacks on Sotomayor are racially motivated or not**, the point is that most Latinos and decent whites are reading it that way. The appointment itself probably wouldn’t swing too many voters, but the rabid, anti-Hispanic froth that the Republican Party has been thrown into surely will. That’s why people like Cornyn, Noonan, and Martinez are desperately trying to position the mainstream of the Republican Party away from its more thuggish factions.
There has been a significant thrust of argument, evident even in fairly main-stream sources, which attempts to portray Sotomayor as “anti-white” or “reverse racist.” This is a standard, racist, fear-mongering tactic that conservatives often try to use to disparage or discredit non-white candidates.
Basically, if the candidate doesn’t kowtow to white superiority, they’re a threat. And it’s quite clear that a lot of the criticism Sotomayor is facing is exactly that kind of racist: she’s a non-white who threatens whites.
“Oh my GOD, did she REALLY say a Latina woman might make a better decision than a white MAN!!! Run for the hills!!!111”
In my opinion, it’s not the nomination that is going to gain Latino votes for the Democrats, but the racism that is going to lose votes for the Republicans. We’ll see how the confirmation hearings go.
Incidentally, someone above stated that Bush’s Hispanic nominees didn’t help him gain votes. Actually, as I recall, they did. Not a majority, by any means, but Bush fared better than previous, recent Republican nominees.
Well, the obvious English-speaker-intuitive way to pronounce his name is to use the two common English words that resemble the first syllables (“crack” and “whore”) followed by the common English suffix that resembles the final syllable ("-ian").
I think a lot of Hispanics felt alienated by the GOP in recent years anyway, and their gripings about Sotomayer being racist and unqualified is only going to drive more people away.
Which is kind of sad really, since a lot of middle class Hispanics I know would fight right in with the GOP’s worldview - socially conservative, hate taxes, want small government, etc.
I suspect that these appointments don’t matter that much in the long run. The number of people who can identify even a few of the Supreme Court justices is minimal. I think most people react to these nominations the way most people react to any political event; they fit it into their existing political views and come away unchanged.
Clarence Thomas was a Yale grad and federal judge, and he was denounced as an affirmative action pick. Moreover, he was portrayed as sexually uncontrollable, which under ordinary circumstances might be considered to be a classically racist depiction of a black man. Did all this change anyone’s political or racial opinions, left or right? I doubt it.
I meant to say “…FIT right in with the GOP’s worldview,” and not FIGHT. I saw this long after the alloted editing period. Maybe I just associated the word Republican with fight.
Clarence Thomas was not denounced as an affirmative action pick, he was denounced for saying that he opposed affirmative action after having been a beneficiary of it. In point of fact, he called his own Yale Law degree “worthless,” and stuck a 15 cent cigar sticker on it to signify that that was all it was worth.
That’s not a racist meme that I’m familiar with. I can name probably 10 white politicians who have been characterized as harrassers or pussy hounds for every black political figure you can name.
It was really Anita Hill who was smeared as a slut and a nutbag during that period in a campaign which David Brock has admitted was an intentionally dishonest character assassination. Anita Hill’s testimony was supported by 5 other witnesses, one of whom was another judge. He did what she said he did, then he played the race card and called it a “high tech lynching,” even though Hill herself was black. It worked too.