by Deb Cupples | The Washington Post has a partial transcript and video of the Sotomayor confirmation hearings.
Constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinski (who wrote a much-used con-law textbook) thinks Sotomayor will be confirmed, despite troll-like behavior on the part of certain senators:
Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford thinks Sen. Graham and a few other Republican senators are shooting their own political feet while trying to showboat at the hearings:
"Watching Lindsey Graham's gotcha grin as he needled Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with disingenuous and rhetorical questions you had to wonder what was so funny.
"Does the Republican senator think it is amusing that he and his party's condescending tone toward the Hispanic woman was costing them ethnic votes with each passing hour of Tuesday's Judiciary Committee hearing?
"It is not that the Republican inquiries were out of bounds in legal terms. But a confirmation hearing like this is a political forum."
Why is it so hard for so many Republican politicians to get it right?
Apparently, controlling the White House, U.S. House, and U.S. Senate for most of the new millennium's first decade -- followed by two years of legislative hijacking via filibuster -- made some Republican politicians seem ridiculously out of touch with many millions of American voters.
That and for a few years after the 9/11 attacks, the White House and Republican Congress could get away with saying pretty much any ridiculously reality-bucking thing that came to mind -- and they repeatedly did.
That seems to be how our nation got into a so-called "preemptive" war in Iraq, how our Bill of Rights got partially destroyed, how so many private contractors have been allowed to rob us taxpayers, how our entire financial ultimately came to near collapse....
Unfortunately for most Republican politicians, the nation ultimately woke up and looked around and saw some pretty horrifying results.
Even after Hurricane Katrina (which marked the beginning of the plummeting credibility of then-President Bush and the party he controlled) many Republican politicians continued indulging in ridiculous posturing and BS-ing -- habits that seem to be as hard to break as cigarettes.
Is it any wonder that the national Republican Party has lost so much credibility?
Memeorandum has commentary
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Interesting post. Yet if GOP views were truly outside the mainstream, then why did Sotomayor feel obligated to distance herself from her past positions that hinted at judicial activism? Afterall, Dems have 60 votes plus several wishy-washy Republicans. She could boldy declare that - yes, the judiciary is for policymaking; yes, Hispanic women are innately superior to white men; yes, Roe is settled law; yes, empathy is an appropriate weight in decision-making; no, individuals have no right to own guns. She could say all those things and still be confirmed. In other words, there was no need for her disguise her true views of the judiciary. Yet she did ... repeatedly. Why?
Because SHE and the liberal judicial philosophy espoused in academia are what are outside the American mainstream, not GOP views. In her testimony, she 1) repudiated Obama on the need for empathy; 2) agreed with Scalia and Thomas on not using foreign law; 3) affirmed the 2nd Amendment as an individual right to bear arms; 4) declined to endorse Roe v Wade; and 5) flatly said that judges imposing policy choices on judicial decisions is "improper."
Now I believe she was lying. I think her true views are the opposite and that she'll be in the Ginsburg-Breyer mold on the court. (I also think she'll be easily confirmed for reasons of political calculation, not principle.)
But that's not the point. Your post claims the GOP is outside the mainstream. The opposite is true. The point is, What is "mainstream"? Clearly, she believe what she is saying to the committee is mainsteam, so that's why she is saying it. And that's why it is easy to confuse her answers with those of John Roberts when he was being attacked ineffectively by Democrats a few years ago.
As Jonathan Adler says in the Washington Post, "It is almost as if she and her White House handlers believe that a more forthright explication of a liberal judicial philosophy -- a philosophy like that articulated in her speeches and defended by the president -- would pose an obstacle to her confirmation. If so, this would be a remarkable concession to the way conservatives have sought to frame judicial confirmations."
And liberal Georgetown law professor Mike Seidman said, "I was completely disgusted by Judge Sotomayor's testimony today. If she was not perjuring herself, she is intellectually unqualified to be on the Supreme Court. If she was perjuring herself, she is morally unqualified. How could someone who has been on the bench for seventeen years possibly believe that judging in hard cases involves no more than applying the law to the facts? … Perhaps Justice Sotomayor should be excused because our official ideology about judging is so degraded that she would sacrifice a position on the Supreme Court if she told the truth."
Posted by: Close Observer | July 17, 2009 at 02:59 PM