I talked about this in the comments earlier, but this NY Times piece gets to the nut of the matter:
President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has put the Republican Party in a bind, as it weighs the cost of aggressively opposing Mr. Obama’s attempt to put the first Hispanic on the high court at a time when the party has struggled with sharp setbacks in its effort to appeal to Hispanic voters.
The Republican Party has been embroiled in a public argument over whether to tend to the ideological interests of its conservative base or to expand its appeal to a wider variety of voters in order to regain its strength following the defeats of 2008. Many conservatives came out fiercely against Ms. Sotomayor as soon her name was announced, denouncing her as liberal and promising Mr. Obama a tough nomination fight.
The only decision the Republicans have right now is whether or not they filibuster Sotomayor. That is it. They are operating from a point of real weakness right now, and the only choice they have to make is whether or not to go all in. If they decide not to filibuster, all that remains is a balancing act for them- how to not do a bunch of damage to themselves by way of hyperbolic statements that will be played on infinite loop in heavy Hispanic areas in the 2010 midterms, but at the same time still making it look like they are throwing some red meat to the base to keep the fundraising money coming in to the coffers.
I’d argue that having Tom Tancredo and crazy Uncle Pat Buchanan on television screaming “reverse racism” and “affirmative action pick” is a particularly striking example of failing to find the appropriate balance. The real question here is how much damage the Republicans will manage to do to themselves, at least right now.
*** Update ***
Here is an example of the Republicans just phoning it in:
Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important that the law as written. She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one’s sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.
She reads racial preferences and quotas into the Constitution, even to the point of dishonoring those who preserve our public safety. On September 11, America saw firsthand the vital role of America’s firefighters in protecting our citizens. They put their lives on the line for her and the other citizens of New York and the nation. But Judge Sotomayor would sacrifice their claims to fair treatment in employment promotions to racial preferences and quotas. The Supreme Court is now reviewing that decision.
She has an extremely high rate of her decisions being reversed, indicating that she is far more of a liberal activist than even the current liberal activist Supreme Court.
Putting aside the 9/11 weak tea, Wendy Long was a law clerk for Judge Ralph Winter of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.
I wonder if we just heard from one of Jeffrey Rosen’s sources?
And is racial resentment all they have? Really?
Gregory
I also wonder if the GOP isn’t making a mistake — not that I mind, of course — by not keeping its powder dry, since Obama didn’t nominate a “liberal Scalia” this time around.
Come the next nominee, if — if! — Obama does pick a stronger or more outspoken liberal, the usual suspects will trout out the usual “extreme liberal!” “activist judge!” canards, and although of course the so-called “liberal media” will give them an airing, they’ll be old news, and full of meh.
Well, they’ll be full of meh anyway.
Justin
Yeah, enough about Sotomayer. In other news, the Governor General of Canada, Michelle Jean, gutted a seal and ate its fucking raw heart.
Jesus, I love my country.
eric
this is another example of chess (Obama) vs. checkers (GOP). The GOP has had weeks to prepare for this precise nominee and not a single bit of coordination. Of course, when your titular heads are Steele or Limbaugh, you really are in a bind. Though I would have funnelled everything through Hatch on the committee, with everyone else taking a wait and see approach saying something like: “of course she is a liberal and of course she is pro-abortion and of course she is pro affiramtive action. But we will wait for the full hearing before we decide how to exercise our constitutional obligation to check and to balance the president.” See, not hard.
The fact that the GOP allows Yoo to comment on this (or anything) just shows how tonedeaf those clowns are.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
I think the ‘safe’ Repugs will opt for the “MORE COWBELL!” route while the Repugs who are courting Latino voters will remain fairly silent on the matter. No matter what, President Obama has put them in a(nother) tight spot; damned if they do or damned if they don’t.
Win/win works too, at least from my perspective. ;)
Bill E Pilgrim
Gosh I wonder which way they’ll go?
Grasping the fact that they’re being absolutely sunk in polls and bleeding members by this “The Party of No” image, they’ll decide to graciously debate some of the relevant issues a little while praising the nominee’s extraordinary achievements and so on, thus stanching the bleeding especially among certain demographics..?
Nah, who am I kidding. They’ll scream and rant and throw themselves another anvil or two, but at least no one will get criticized by Rush the next morning.
Little Dreamer
John,
The only thing the GOP is concerned with currently is adhesion to it’s GOP hate agenda. They don’t care about anything else.
Rosali
Whenever you hear right-wingers derisively referring to empathy as a good quality to have, throw this back at them from Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings:
Bill E Pilgrim
@eric:
I think you’re being kind. It’s more like sixteen dimensional game theory simulations versus an infant trying to figure out how to work the busy box button that makes the horn go “toot”.
They do seem so thrilled when they get it right.
John Cole
@eric: Factor in that the last visible thing the RNC did before Obama nominated a Hispanic woman was release a commercial comparing Nancy Pelosi to “Pussy Galore,” and you honestly have to wonder if these guys have the ability to think past the next hour.
Laura W
@Justin: OMFG. That is the funniest thing in my day. BY FAR.
(Wait. I don’t mean funny. I mean disturbing. Funny disturbing. Ack.)
Sammi the Cat
Whenever you hear right-wingers derisively referring to empathy as a good quality to have, throw this back at them from Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings:
wvng
Thank you for that Justin!
John Cole
@Justin: I’m not sure what is so admirable about that- if Sarah Palin did something like that liberals would freak out. Hell, there was a minor flare-up among some of the more idiotic wings of the Democratic party about Palin sitting on damned Bear rug.
I’ll note the bear probably didn’t give a shit after being shot.
WereBear
If it’s not an white, male, whackjob, it’s wrong.
Ash
@Justin: Yeah, I read that story earlier. Great way to stimulate the gag reflex.
JC, I’m pretty sure the “Jesus, I love my country” was sarcasm….
Bill E Pilgrim
@Gregory:
Oh but he did, by definition, in the wingnut mind.
They’re nothing if not on auto-pilot.
eric
@John Cole: in fact, that is one of their many problems…they are always trying to win the daily news cycle and that does not equal long term electoral success. Sure, you can get on the air and call Obama a socialist with little rebuttal on CNN and none on Fox, but where are you the next day?
Just as Clinton got lucky and got Gingrich, Obama got mega-lucky and got Steele/Limbaugh/Gingrinch.
It is hard to say just how great he is as a politician when the opponent is just so god awful.
eric
Bill E Pilgrim
@John Cole:
I’m fairly certain “I love my country” was sarcasm.
Laura W
@John Cole: Well let’s not forget the turkey slaughter photo opp.
I sort of sensed Justin was going for ironical, and not admirable.
But then I’ve been wrong an awful lot tonight.
Edit: Consensus seems to be John needs a beer or two to recalibrate his sarcasm apparatus.
demkat620
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal): What I love is how easy he makes it look. Just effortless. I swear I can’t tell if its he is just that good or they are just that bad.
Bill E Pilgrim
Mind meld with Ash, to the verbatim level. Almost.
John Cole
@Bill E Pilgrim: Well, according to all the wingnut anklebiters who trackback here I am a liberal now, so maybe I just lost my sense of humor.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
If they do filibuster (Please, FSM!) I want commercials running constantly, with the same guys filibustering on one half of a split screen and screaming: “Upperdownvote! Upperdownvote!” on the other. Is that too much to ask?
BDR
It’s May 2009. A month ago we all were gonna die of swine flu.
Hmmm, Hispanic vote v filling coffers, Hispanic vote v filling coffers…..
JGabriel
Bill E Pilgrim:
It’s a minor distinction, but an important one, I think.
Lots of people like the idea of “No”. Maybe not on Obama’s particular policies right now, but in general they expect the opposition party to be, well, opposing.
The thing that’s really driving people away from Republicans right now is the Crazee™. And the racism, homophobia, misogyny, etc. For the Republican base, Sotomayor is a two-fer, they get to oppose her on both race and gender. If only she were gay, they’d have a Triple-Crown winner for the Daily Five Minutes Hate, aka the Crazee™.
.
Roger Moore
@eric:
They can’t keep Yoo from commenting on this (or anything) not because they’re tone deaf but because there’s nobody who is in a position to tell him to shut up. It’s an inherent problem for the minority party in our system: there is no clearly defined leader. There’s no equivalent to the shadow government in a parliamentary system. There’s no coherent leadership, only a whole bunch of people who want to be the new leadership, or who are taking advantage of the power vacuum to advance their own agendas.
sgwhiteinfla
I know this was discussed on a different thread but if anybody missed Pat Buchanan calling Sotomayor an affirmative action pick here is the clip.
mediamatters.org/mmtv/200905260066
Ninerdave
Am I the only one who’s already sick of hearing the phrase “Judicial Activism” (or its many incarnations)?
JK
Norm Coleman on Sotomayor
h/t tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/coleman-i-will-review-sotomayers-record-when-i-am-re-elected.php
Notorious P.A.T.
OMG! What a surprise! The wingnuts are using–sit down for this–9/11 to smear Soltomayor!
bench.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTU0NGI5MTFjYWI0MWQ2ZGFlMWY5NjBjMzY2YWQyZTI=
Who would have thought? I’m shocked–shocked!
Bill E Pilgrim
@John Cole:
Welcome. It will be kept in a jar and will be 100% refundable should you choose to revert.
What, are you kidding? Oh wait, no you can’t, now.
But really have you ever seen conservatives trying to be funny?? Two words, and they start with Dennis Miller.
I thought PJ was funny sometimes, but…eh, not much really.
Personally I think if one had even the slightest sense of humor or even irony, certainly any sense of the absurd, it would be literally, physically impossible to be a Republican right now. I mean, think about it.
eric
Jgabriel: she is single and childless….do the math ;). Score!
John, can We say that Obama is beàting them like a rented mule, yet?
Eric
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
No way any of these knuckleheads have the balls to filibuster. Who would do it exactly? As they dip below 40 senators, they are increasingly left with people who don’t have to do much heavy lifting to get re-elected. The most you will see is some carefully scripted sound bites in the hope they are “memorable” enough that they get some play in 2010 if they are up to bring in more $$$.
Dennis-SGMM
This is where the GOP’s months of incoherent raving, waves of ostracisms, and knee crawling obedience to the dictates of Rush Limbaugh will really pay off.
demkat620
Hey, where are the PUMAs? Didn’t they tell us Obama hates women and minorities? Whatever happened to those crackerheads?
John Cole
@Notorious P.A.T.: Check the update. The author of that comment was a clerk on the 2nd Circuit. Wonder if she was a Rosen source?
demkat620
@Gordon, The Big Express Engine: Brownback, Burr, and Isakson. And I’d bet Sessions would lead it.
Justin
I wasn’t thinking either “admirable” or “ironic”. More like “WTF, the GG did what?”
You have to understand: on paper the Governor General is the supreme law of the land in Canada. As the representative of the Queen of Canada (who currently resides in England), she signs legislation that the Prime Minister hands to her, saying something like “Governor General, for this bill, having been duly passed in the House of Commons and the Senate, I beg of you the Queen’s approval”.
In practice, the GG is a figurehead position, who simply holds tea parties. Though it should be noted that when Harper wanted to prorogue Parliament in the fall to avoid a vote of no confidence, and to be replaced by a Liberal/NDP/Bloq coalition, he had to get the GG’s permission, and that wasn’t a formality–Michelle Jean had real power to deny Harper’s request and allow Dion to form his coalition, and there was some speculation that she would. Regardless, it’s a basically ceremonial position.
Canadian politics is like that–boring boring boring boring PM chokes protester boring boring boring boring GG eats heart raw….
The comparison with Palin occurred to me as well, but they’re not really the same thing. Jean was participating in a traditional part of an Inuit seal hunt, and did what was culturally appropriate. Arguably, that’s her job, and good on her for nutting up and doing it right. Also, it was in part a defense of seal hunting in Canada, a topic about which the rest of the world freaks out unjustifiably insofar as seal hunting (as currently practiced) is more humane than any industrial slaughterhouse operation.
Then again, I hated Palin for being stupid, not for doing the normal things that Alaskans do. So even then, I’m not upset.
So, “Jesus, I love my country” was mainly “I love Canada for being occasionally fucked up and random like this.”
John Cole
What boggles my mind is the focus on Sotomayor being Hispanic. Sure, it would be a first, but I find it much more shocking that we have only had two women Justices. Women are a bit larger percentage of the population than even Hispanics.
eric
When obama replaces Ginsburg with a white make their collective conservative heads will explode. Ha.
Bill E Pilgrim
@JGabriel:
That’s why I decided it’s better as “The Party of Noh”.
I think people except opposition, but once you get yourself stamped with “obstructionist”, saying no to simply everything regardless of merit– you’re pretty much screwed.
Then if you say yes you’re just reacting to the label and being weak, and if you say no you’re just confirming it. They really are just sunk, but they have no one to blame but themselves.
Laura W
@Justin:
I stand proudly by my record: Consistently wrong since 5:00PM EST tonight.
Calouste
@eric:
Obama’s opponents seem to have a habit of imploding. I am sure there is some luck involved in that, but not exclusively.
Irony Abounds
Since I don’t practice in areas that get reviewed much by appellate courts, I really haven’t much of a clue about Sotomayor’s intellectual firepower, however, for an affirmative action student, being first in your class at Princeton is a bit surprising, as is being an editor on the Yale Law Review. Here I thought class rankings were based at least a bit on, oh, things like grades and such. How silly of me not to know that they awarded her first in her class simply because she was a latina. I certainly hope she doesn’t make a fool of herself on the Supreme Court. Maybe she can take some writing lessons, perhaps brush up on her grammar before she is actually called upon to serve.
I can’t wait for no college diploma Limbaugh starts playing the intellectually mediocre card. Some of the intellectual giants at The Corner are already comparing her to Harriot Myers. Irony will never die, not as long as there is a wingnut living and breathing in this world.
Martin
Coordination has nothing to do with it.
The GOP has painted Obama as irresponsible and they now need to keep reinforcing that. So everything Obama does needs to get tarred with the irresponsible brush, even when they agree with it (middle class tax cut).
Obama, not being stupid, puts out a candidate that appears to be perfectly well qualified and is in no obvious respect a liberal, knowing that the GOP will read from the usual script, attack the candidate in the only way they can (gender, race) and come off looking like fucking idiots. Had he nominated Ronald Reagan’s head in a jar, they would have done the same thing, so Obama just makes sure all the GOP anger and stupidity gets channeled into a productive direction.
Obama should throw them a curve next time and nominate a old white southern baptist in a Colonel Sanders suit, just to watch the reflexive ‘reverse discrimination’ attack from the GOP form a black hole and suck the entire party in.
Maurs
Is this a trick question? I’m gonna have to go with Yes, yes it’s all they have.
Ash
@John Cole: It’s kind of a nice surprise though, that the focus isn’t MAINLY on the fact that she’s a woman. Shows that we’ve progressed. At least a little bit.
The Moar You Know
My prediction: the Republicans will jam a full clip into the M-16 of stupidity and unload it right into their balls. Full auto.
They can’t help themselves. It’s in their DNA or something, this uncontrollable urge to hate brown people, and they won’t be able to resist. You watch.
John Cole
There is something to Obama and his opponents, though. I have no idea if he sold his soul to the devil, but you have to recognize that what the GOP is going through right now is fundamentally no different from the absurdity that was the four month death throe of the Clinton campaign last year. They were so flummoxed and, well, crazy, that I had to create a special tag for posts discussing them:
“I can no longer rationally discuss the Clinton campaign.”
Remember the PUMA movement?
While I’m not a fan of imputing god-like status to Obama, the fact that he keeps doing this to people is not just luck. The kid and his team know what they are doing. This JMart quote was apt:
yes.
Rosali
Hey, I had trouble posting so my cat, who concurs wholeheartedly, posted the same thing. Sorry for the double post. Sammi says “what Rosali said”.
Martin
Ah, but all women get emotional that time of the month, lose their senses and want to cut men’s dicks off in a very activist, far-left liberal, non-strict-constructionist sort of way, so it’s understandable we don’t trust them on courts.
If you pushed a Republican on the issue, I’m sure they’d also remind you that we don’t want the Supreme Court to reflect the pedophile demographic of the country either.
It’s all logical and stuff.
Fern
@Ash:
I don’t think it was sarcasm. Me, I actually admire her for this – trying to get the message to those who want to ban the import of seal products of the importance of this subsistence practice for the Inuit who already deal with crushing social and economic pressures.
Justin
@Fern: Absolutely true, Fern.
gwangung
No luck at all, actually. Make Obama a Republican and stack him up against either Reid or Pelosi. SAME DAMN THING WOULD HAPPEN.
Obama’s a good politician in an era of decided midgets–and make no mistake, almost all politicians these days are midgets. We’ve driven anyone competent out of the arena (and probably into private business) To find anyone close to him, you’d have to go back decades to find someone minimally competent.
JK
More wingnut problems with Sotomayor
Mark Krikorian: “So, are we supposed to use the Spanish pronunciation, so-toe-my-OR, or the natural English pronunciation, SO-tuh-my-er, like Niedermeyer? The president pronounced it both ways, first in Spanish, then after several uses, lapsing into English.”
Quote appearing beside Sotomayor’s Princeton yearbook photo
“I am not a champion of lost causes, but of causes not yet won” – Norman Thomas
Comrade Darkness
“But for the grace of God there go I.”
Wait, you read that as empathy? I’m now wondering who he murdered.
r€nato
WTF? Did I read that correctly? Not, “…the current liberal activists on the Supreme Court,” but, “the current liberal activist Supreme Court”???
If this Supreme Court is a ‘liberal activist’ institution, then I want my money back! Jesus Christ, there’s literally no end to right-wing victimhood.
John Cole
@gwangung: This. Someone was lamenting the fact that team Obama likes to have complete control, and all I could think was you should be thanking your lucky stars.
Two words: Bob Shrum.
‘Nuff said.
r€nato
I disappointed we don’t yet know what BOB thinks of this.
John Cole
Another thing to note that Jmart picked up in that story I linked earlier. Guess where Obama will be next – Las Vegas. Guess what is in the southwest?
A lot of people pretty excited about the pick.
These guys know what they are doing.
Bill E Pilgrim
I think it’s actually okay to say “Obama is a really good politician” without it being proof that one is an “Obamabot” or any other of the wide-eyed species that Wingnuts are so obsessed with.
I’ll have to check the regs.
r€nato
@John Cole:
Are we sure we’re talking about Democrats?
Comrade Darkness
@r€nato: I disappointed we don’t yet know what BOB thinks of this.
I have a theory about that. BoB disappeared just about the time the Sam Shulman discussion came up…
Do the persona math. Just sayin’.
Laura W
@John Cole:
Well, that’s how I got here a year ago. I know I posted this last week in response to something Martin said about the site crashing when This Week in Cheese used to link to it, but I didn’t re-read your post that Sully had linked to about the Clintons that led me here until a couple days ago. It was good.
/sycophant
ETA: Looking back, I think I liked the tag as much as the post.
JL
@John Cole: What boggles my mind is how many Catholics are on the court considering the percentage of Catholics in the country. Not that there’s a problem with that. I was raised as a Catholic and still find great value in some of their teachings.
Betsy
Did anyone see this gem from Inhofe?
In the words of a (white, male) friend of mine who sent that to me:
“You see, it’s not that we look down on you non-white, non-males. We’re truly
inspired by your personal life stories. And we think you’re super-smart! All
have to do is figure out how to function divorced of all ethnicity and gender.
Like us!”
ETA: Also, I love that the subject line of my friend’s email when sending me this incredibly offensive quote was “re: white man’s burden.”
Bill E Pilgrim
@r€nato:
Keep in mind that this whole “Oh the Democrats always lose” thing is fairly recent. People have short memories.
There were times, and lots of them in a row, when the jokes were the other way around.
geg6
John, they answered your question earlier today. They’ve decided that they’re fucked with the Hispanic vote anyway (Obama’s numbers with them are only slightly lower than his numbers among African Americans), so it’s full out wingnut meltdown. And the fact that they have seen this as more of a fundraising opportunity than anything else shows they will not be dialing anything back to keep from offending those dirty, shiftless, unreliable, probably illegal brown people. Hell, even the Cubans in Miami can’t be counted on to support them anymore.
JK
Tell that to Dawn Johnsen and Harold Koh.
r€nato
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I grew up in the 1980s, aka the era of the Reagan Youth. I’m now 43.
Pretty much my entire adult life, the Democratic party has been pathetic and weak, with the exception of the Clinton years and even then, much of that time was spent pushing policies which were basically Republican policies with the rough edges sanded off. The truly progressive initiatives – like national health care and allowing gays to openly serve in the military – were shot down, in no small part due to mishandling by Clinton.
I hope for the rest of my life, the joke is on the GOP.
joe from Lowell
OK, here’s my prediction:
The Republicans will run around make a great deal of noise for a couple weeks. They will launch one line of attack after another. Some of these will contradict each other. They will all predict doom.
Barack Obama will be calm, and not pay much attention to them.
Sotomayor will be confirmed by a wide margin, and no one will remember what the Republicans had been so worked up about a month later.
omen
And is racial resentment all they have? Really?
this is sarcasm, right?
Montysano
@John Cole:
It’s one thing to shoot an animal to use it as interior decoration. It’s something else altogether to shoot something, carve it up, and eat it. I got no problem with it.
As to the GOP, what’s really left to say? They’re painted into a very tight corner. I predict, now that Petraeus and Powell have jumped ship, you’ll see others begin to calve off and try to become electable.
Notorious P.A.T.
Hey, 5 years ago no one knew who he was. Today he’s president of the United States. He must be doing something right.
JL
@John Cole: The quote from Martin is great and thank you for linking to it.
“It’s hard to be breathtaking and boring, but Obama somehow finds a way.
Brandon T
@eric:
Uhh, no. The GOP has not changed their opposition strategy one bit. Aren’t these the same things conservatives ALWAYS say when a liberal gets a chance to nominate a justice? It’s practically fill-in-the-blank.
The difference is that Democrats used to be TERRIFIED of these “judicial activist” crap and other GOP tropes. To see this behavior in action, you just have to look at California, where (despite the Republicans being an absurd minority) Democrats are terrified of the “tax revolt” and their entire strategy consists of avoiding the issue or trying to convince the voters they’re not going to raise taxes “that much”, rather than trying to justify taxes from a good government perspective.
r€nato
@geg6:
The Republicans are idiots if they pursue such a ‘screw the brown vote’ campaign, even if Hispanics largely approve of Obama right now. Once again, they’re buying a short-term gain for the cost of further alienating the fastest-growing voting bloc in the country. This is how they have permanently alienated the black vote – repeatedly giving in to the temptation to get white votes with race baiting in even-numbered years, followed by weak, less-than-half-hearted attempts to reach out to black voters in odd-numbered years. In the short run, voters can do dumb things but in the long run they’re not stupid; they notice these shenanigans.
JGabriel
Comrade Darkness:
You know, that Shulman piece really did read a lot like a BOB post. Hmm.
.
joe from Lowell
There’s that budget pamphlet thing they released.
geg6
Laura W: Huh. It was the PUMAs and the primaries that brought me here, too. That and another former GOPer like John who was mightily impressed with John’s Schiavo awakening. He insisted I come here and read John’s stuff. I’m ashamed to admit that I still haven’t dug into the archives to read up on that period. I have to find some time one day to do that.
omen
President Obama is one of the most gifted politicians, one of the most gifted men that I have ever witnessed. He has extraordinary talents. He has communication skills that hardly anyone can surpass. ~ rush limbaugh
stickler
Will the GOP step on their dicks again? Um, … given the evidence of the last five months, I’m going to go with “yeah.”
They’re going to spout and spew, Rush will egg them on, they’ll launch a filibuster on laughably thin grounds, and after an ugly and unnecessary interval where people like Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III manage to spin out two-hour speeches that can best be “shortered” by the word SPIC! (or maybe SPIC! DYKE! NOT-MALE!), the filibuster will fail and Sotomayor will be confirmed.
The GOP will, as our host points out, thus add another insult to the Hispanic voters of the Southwest, thus spreading the GOP electoral magic from California, Oregon, Washington, etc., inland to AZ, NV, NM, so on and so forth, world without end, Amen.
And Rush’s audience will marginally go up by a tenth of a share in a few major metro markets.
Comrade Darkness
@JGabriel: You know, that Shulman piece really did read a lot like a BOB post. Hmm.
Now, I’m trying to decide… Since I am certain that BoB is/was a spoof, I’m thinking Shulman must be one too and he’s blown his cover.
@stickler, I have a suggestion for the GOP that they start reading Harry Potter from the beginning of book 1. Should suck up a week of time and at least be entertaining. Added: but please let it be the British edition of book 1. The American edition got dumbed down to pathetic.
Betsy
@eric:
I’m confused – in what way did Clinton get lucky when Gingrich was his opponent? As I recall, two years into his presidency, Gingrich orchestrated the election of the first republican House majority in 2 generations, which made it hard for Clinton to get anything even remotely liberal accomplished.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Notorious P.A.T.:
I couldn’t agree more. I was just teasing about how people feel the need to include disclaimers when saying things like that, to ward off “in the tank” accusations from wingnuts I guess. Just strikes me as odd.
Laura W
@geg6: Well, besides how we straggled in this door, and “High Fidelity”, we have Therapy in common. I think you missed my post last night. How about that Oliver? And Mia? God she was good. Have you caught up yet? The freakin’ thunderstorms took down my DTV precisely at the moment Paul was unburdening himself to Gina in the very final season finale! I’m gonna catch it in 14 minutes. God, Oliver broke my heart. As I said last night, I suspect April broke yours?
Incertus
@Betsy: A cynical person would say that losing Congress gave Clinton the cover he needed to chart a moderate course, and Gingrich gave him an opponent he could play like a Stratocaster.
Comrade Luke
Is it possible….remotely possible…that Obama decided that he wanted an Hispanic woman on the court because it was time for an Hispanic, and it was time for another woman, as opposed to just being political?
It just seems like as soon as any decision gets made the discussion revolves around the politics. Is it possible that it was just the right thing to do?
I dunno. Just thought I’d ask.
geg6
Laura W: You’re gonna be surprised by what happens with Gina, I think. Poor Oliver! And April…I love that girl. And I loved that she told him about Sophie posting on his webpage. Man, I love that show. HBO rocks. Next up: True Blood. And if you aren’t into that one, you don’t know what you’re missing.
Davis X. Machina
I predict the ‘she’s dumb’ gambit will backfire, and so the following reverse double-pump-fake-reverse is coming:
“She’s too damn smart. Went to fancy schools. Stuffed like a dollar-store piñata with book-learnin’. So her vaunted ’empathy’ will be for other pointy-heads like her, and not Cletus and Brandine Spuckler here.”
Being freed from the chains of consistency, nay from the shackles of rational thought altogether, is so liberating.
Betsy
@Comrade Luke:
I think the answer is that there are lots of “right things to do” in a situation like this, and in deciding which one is going to happen now, politics plays a deciding role.
UnkyT
@John Cole:
The difference is that I’m sure the Governor General immediately applogized to the seal for the inconvenience.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Comrade Luke:
I think both can be true.
The pick can be largely for non-political reasons, the politics is how you get it confirmed. And then in another sense you also can’t separate them, in picking who you think can get confirmed and so on you’re being political. However I don’t think admiring the political skills means that you have to think it’s only politics that was involved.
El Cid
No. That is completely unfair. They also possess class disdain against the economic interests of the vast majority, they stock and trade in hatred against secular rationalism, they grow drunk upon homophobia while standing in a sea of eroticism, and they thrive upon puffing up right wing pseudo-intellectuals as though they were the heights of Western Civ.
Betsy
@Incertus:
Ah, I see. Well, I was in high school during most of the Clinton administration, and while I followed politics somewhat, I no doubt was not attuned to the nuances of spin. So I have no real memory of Clinton playing Gingrich in the way you describe; I just remember welfare reform, DADT, DOMA, Monica, etc.
Laura W
@geg6: Oh, get this. My cable came on for the last 5 min. of Gina and Paul! So I know the climax, but not the foreplay! Ack.
I tried True Blood when it began but couldn’t get into it. I’m not really into vampires and Sci-Fi. I should probably whisper that since it’s a ban-worth admission, surely.
Bring back 6FU or Carnivale? I’m so there.
JGabriel
Comrade Darkness:
I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. They’ll probably just identify with Lord Voldemort even more strongly.
.
El Cid
@Davis X. Machina: That’s good, but maybe they’ve got more in mind — simultaneous ‘dumb spic chic’ and ‘over-educated la-di-da ay-leetiss!’ Can they pull it off?
Incertus
@Betsy: Actually, my point is that things like DOMA (DADT predates it, I think), welfare reform and the like were all stuff Clinton probably would have tried to move on regardless. Remember NAFTA? He passed that with just a handful of Democratic votes. Gingrich gave Clinton cover in a way that his own party never would have, and he was able to play Gingrich well enough to get what he wanted out of him.
omen
@Comrade Luke:
let them bitch all they want about tokenism. they can’t say she’s unqualified when the reality is this:
Administration officials say Sotomayor would bring more judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice confirmed in the past 70 years.
somebody once pointed out to me everything is political. it’s inevitable.
Bill E Pilgrim
The weaving of non-fiction and fiction throughout this thread is on the edge of surreal.
Gina and Paul, that’s Begala, right? And “Clinton played Gingrich”, in what? Some biopic?
“She posted something on his Web site” that’s who, Sonia Sotomayor??
God I’m confused.
Nancy Darling
eric at #3. The Republicans aren’t playing checkers—it is more like a six year old’s game of Go Fish.
Apsaras
Everyone knows Hermione Granger got into Hogwarts thanks to pro-mudblood affirmative action.
prospero
Wait, so what has Obama accomplished again with his amazing “Zomg it’s like Capablanca playing chess against a chipmunk only it’s Capablanca’s ghost so he’s in the 175th dimension and also he’s just as dreaaaaaaaaaaaamy as Capablanca” abilities? Other than, you know, a bailout about which nobody on the Left had much reason to be pleased? Or do we need a filibuster-proof 105 seats in the Senate before anything other than good old fashioned Chicago style political gamesmanship (silly Repugs, roffles!@ zomg!@) happens? I mean isn’t making his base feel self-satisfied and better than the other guys exactly what another very recent President was really good at, too?
PanAmerican
demkat620:
Murphy at pumapac.org is still posting racist garbage and linking to the incoherent mutterings of the remaining bittersphere. A choice entry from nutbag Joseph Cannon:
I remember when, I remember
I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place
Even your emotions have an echo in so much space
And when you’re out there without care
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn’t because I didn’t know enough
I just knew too much
Does that make me crazy?
Isakson and Burr’s approvals are terrible heading into next year’s elections. A couple of points worth of women and Hispanic votes could easily sink them.
rikyrah
I love that the GOP can’t help themselves.
Sotomayor graduates Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton and MSNBC’s resident racist, Pat Buchanan, calls her an Affirmative Action candidate.
they cant help themselves
Comrade Darkness
@JGabriel: I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. They’ll probably just identify with Lord Voldemort even more strongly.
Yeah, but Cheney is gone now. Mostly.
And at the end when Voldemort gets pwned because he’s not pure enough. That might be the wrong message.
Bill E Pilgrim
@prospero:
Huh?
What’s he accomplished with this pick “other than a bailout”?
Mind you I may be misreading that but, well, let’s be fair, with all the explosive punctuation, who can blame me?
Laura W
@Bill E Pilgrim: Bill, are you French? Or just living over there among the mootard-slurping elitists?
You’ll get into the BJ surreal surfing groove with a bit more time (and wine.)
I think one of the most important and attractive attributes of BJ is that our host is not obsessive about his commenters staying on topic*, so there is a very creative and free-associative flow to most of the threads. Relax. Breathe in and out. Be with the thread. Be the thread.
*He’s obsessive about cleaning.
And nose hairs.
ETA: GAVIN NEWSOM IS SO HOT!!
(I mean, just visually.)
omen
@PanAmerican:
excellent timing.
JGabriel
PanAmerican:
What is this, the fucking Twelve Steps of ObamAnonymous?
.
gex
@Bill E Pilgrim: In the end, it’s all just a dream sequence.
Gus
Yes. SATSQ.
timb
Probably too late, since no one’s reading this thread anymore, but guess whatever seething, pissed off theocon clerked for Judge Winter? The great hater who is Laura Ingraham. Apparently, Judge Winter has a crazy factory in his office aznd production is high
geg6
Laura W: Actually, there’s quite the political/social subtext under all the vampire and werewolf stuff in True Blood. Plus, the people are exceptionally good looking for the most part. I find the show pretty smart (as I do the Sookie Stackhouse books), subversive, sexy, and quite hilarious. I’m not a vampire or even horror fan, but I really like True Blood.
Brachiator
@Irony Abounds:
Conservative goobers are kinda stuck here. Remember that previously they dissed Obama for being an aristocratic elitist, and warmed to Sarah Palin exactly because of her modest intellectual achievements (which also sadly seems the fate of the Palin children as well).
Joe the Plumber and his conservative cohorts believe that a high school education, and a reading knowledge of the Bible, are all you need to get you through life.
And people who think the only reason to go to college because it is a perpetual toga party have no clue as to what summa cum laude (which the nominee achieved at Princeton) represents.
But what’s up with Obama appointing another Roman Catholic to the bench? Are there no qualified Protestants? Actually, this may be another example of Obama-Fu (damn, this is fun to watch).
Bill E Pilgrim
@Laura W:
Yep, I actually like it. Just the right combination of things, and the font isn’t too small to read, which is oddly more important than people realize.
No not French, but lived here a long time, including pretty much the entire Bush years (I can’t leave you people alone for a minute).
To me the Bush Kerry debates actually happened streaming in the middle of the night, to this day I remember them as “WTF are all these people in the US doing up at this hour in that brightly lit room?”
Laura W
@geg6: OK. Because you and I seem to share so many other faves, I will definitely give it another shot based on your recommendation. (I remain confident that you and I are the only commenters who love “In Treatment”, and you were the only other “High Fidelity” mention that I saw on the movie thread, so you know…I trust your excellent taste.)
anonevent
@prospero: As your examples point out, Obama isn’t exactly doing stuff just to please his base: bailouts or fighting in Pakistan for example. Welcome to the one blog where we bitch about an Obama decision one week and then talk about how mature that decision was a week later, and we’re still pissed at him for making it.
Brian J
The current court can be described as an example of liberal activism? That would probably surprise a lot of people, including the justices themselves.
I’d also like to see some evidence that her opinions are overturned.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Didn’t you know? Princeton hands out Phi Beta Kappa keys to every Hispanic student who registers for classes.
omen
somebody tell chris matthews he’s mispronouncing sonia sotomayor’s name:
slate.com/id/2219047/
Ninerdave
Same with Harvard, the make any black dude that walks across campus the editor of the Law Review.
steve s
A lot of people are highly praising Obama’s supergenius moves for making the republicans look bad. I’m not sure how much credit he deserves for that. Don’t get me wrong, he’s clearly a very smart guy. But I think the main reason that republicans look like idiots right now is simply that they are idiots.
This is the party you join when you believe that invisible rays from gay marriages will ruin straight marriages, tax cuts always increase revenue, the earth is 6,000 years old, certain kinds of lettuce and mustard are unamerican, and Barack Obama is a foreign communist revolutionary.
In short, it’s the party you join when you’re really stupid.
Dennis-SGMM
@PanAmerican:
Gnarls Barkley is one of the best albums I have ever heard. This from someone who saw Hendrix at Monterey Pop, Big Brother at Leon Tabori’s barn and Cream at Fillmore. My judgment may be suspect though because I also saw Sonny & Cher as a ticket holder on Bob Hull’s “Hullabaloo” and Frank Zappa at Selland Arena in Fresno.
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
My suggestion is that we all hit the Conservative blogs, don pen names, and start taking her apart as a ‘dumb rican’ and calling her a double entitlement pick.
That’s what the Republicans were doing with the Palin pick.
Ninerdave
Malkin:
Quote: ——
There are murmurs of filibuster threats by the GOP.
Alas, those are idle threats, as all the GOP’s past filibuster threats have been over the past year.
Mark my words.
End Quote: ——-
Guess she’s no longer in the upperdown vote camp.
AhabTRuler
@Ninerdave: Dear god, is that what we have been reduced to here? Homemade blockquote tags? All long last Cole, have you no sense of decency?
Dennis-SGMM
@AhabTRuler:
I had to hand knit my last three posts.
tc125231
@Bill E Pilgrim:
But really have you ever seen conservatives trying to be funny?? Two words, and they start with Dennis Miller.
Of, course, with Dennis Miller these days, the operative verb is TRYING. He’s not actually even slightly amusing.
peaches
the fat butts who speak in limited code here are ruining it.
if you all want to dominate a thread with you nonsense, k.
just know it is BORING.
Cain
Hey btw, Sonia’s middle name is Maria, I suspect our boy Huckabee was using the middle name.
Also, that fuck ass, Hannity called up Madcow and still told him that waterboarding was not torture. We need to get this guy waterboarded for charity. Let’s see if he’s man enough to do it. Asshole.
cain
burnspbesq
@JK:
That’s the funniest thing I’ve read all month. Thank you for that.
“When I am re-elected.” Snicker. Giggle. Guffaw. ROFL. PIP.
Ninerdave
@AhabTRuler:
Nah, I just forgot to wrap the initial blockquote (since it was in three paragraphs) in the paragraph tag and the edit post feature kept eating the tags when I tried to fix it.
I suppose you could blame the edit feature, or the fact that you have to wrap blockquotes in p tags if they contain more than one paragraph, or you could just say I knew better.
JGabriel
@Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s:
That cunning plan fails due to redundancy – the R’s will do that themselves without any prompting from us. Hell, they’re already doing it.
.
burnspbesq
It is exceptionally droll when the Radical Right derides Judge Sotomayor as an “affirmative action nominee.” If ever anyone was the poster child for the successes of affirmative action programs, it is Sonia Sotomayor.
Assume for purposes of discussion that somebody in the admissions office at Princeton bent a rule or two to admit her, and that otherwise she would have ended up at someplace like SUNY Albany (no offense to any Albany alums intended). All she did with that opportunity was run with it, all the way to summa cum laude and an editorship on the Yale Law Journal – and I assure you she got those on nothing but merit.
This is exactly what affirmative action programs were designed to create: equality of opportunity. What people do with those opportunities depends on the individual. Sonia Sotomayor took hers and kicked major ass with it. For which she is to be deeply admired.
Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall in her first conference, when she goes toe-to-toe with Scalia and walks away with his balls in her purse?
Wile E. Quixote
@El Cid
Nobody expects the Republican Party! Our chief weapon is racial resentment, racial resentment and class disdain against the economic interests of the vast majority of Americans. Our two weapons are racial resentment, class disdain against the economic interests of the vast majority of Americans and a fanatical loyalty to the zombie corpse of Ronald Reagan. Our three weapons are racial resentment and class disdain against the economic interests of the vast majority of Americans and hatred of secular rationalism and homophobia. Our four, no, Amongst our weapons are such elements such as weapons are racial resentment, class disdain against the economic interests of the vast majority of Americans…We’ll try this again in 2012.
Krissed Off
@stickler:
Have their legs become that short?
stickler
Krissed off:
The ignorant fools lost the House during a time of war, and their candidate for President — decorated military POW, beloved media gadfly — got beat for the Presidency by a guy named Barack Hussein Obama. Seven years after a guy with a very similar last name knocked down a few buildings in NYC and Washington DC.
I don’t know if that means their legs got short, or their dicks got flaccid and stretched. Whatever it is, they’re stepping on their own dicks day in, day out. Pray for shrinkage if you’re still a GOP voter.
Ninerdave
@burnspbesq:
Bing-f’n-Go
Ninerdave
The GOP was a rump party going into 2008, the base hated McCain, they only had
eyesstarbursts for Palin. Dubya and Cheney destroyed the GOP as we once knew it. After they finish burning themselves to the ground, we’ll see what arises from the ashes. Hopefully, a competent party and hopefully, the Dems will wake up and realize the gift they’ve been given and push the Overton window to the left.That’s going to take a while, for both things to happen, until then I’m rooting for a GOP filibuster of Maria.
FlipYrWhig
And you know who burnished his credentials for the Reagan administration by bragging about his involvement in attempting to keep women and minorities out of Princeton? Samuel Alito. Samuel Alito, class of 1972; Sonia Sotomayor, class of 1976.
Anne Laurie
As someone who was raised in a working-class Irish-American family, I have a suspicion that the Opus Dei authoritarians like Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas appeal to the fReichtard/Talibangelical Repubs’ idea of a “model minority”. They’re just as bigoted, homophobic, and misogynistic as real Heartland Americans(tm) like Pat Robertson or Jeff Sessions! See, ladies ‘n lie-bruls, we *can* better ourselfs and rise to the true Pale Male heights, if only we can resist our crab-in-a-bucket pvssy-gaywad urges towards squishy un-American ideas like “empathy” and “community”!
jonas
Win.
Anne Laurie
Think the little putz will call in sick on the day Justice Sotomayor is sworn in? Or will he just sit there sniveling while the teevee cameras swivel to show his wife in the gallery bawling?
Also, an aside from the latest Sunday Globe:
To my mind, any reasonably educated person in this day & age still pretending that some titled nothing must have been the “real” motivating force behind the master showman known to us as Shakespeare, because, you know, only someone from the better classes, mumble mumble, is either a joker or a twit. And while Stevens may plead senility, I have never heard of Fat Nino exhibiting a sense of humor.
jonas
It needs to be pointed out that the ruling against the white firefighters in New Haven that Sotomayor wrote demonstrated an admirable lack of empathy for the plight of the plaintiff firefighters and strictly applied the law as written and originally intended: the city of New Haven was within its rights under civil rights law to void the results of an exam it deemed to be unfair to a historically underrepresented minority. It was, all things considered, a remarkably conservative decision which the Roberts court appears prepared to strike down with a squirrely and ill-defined notion of what the law intended by “disparate impact” and an idea of reverse discrimination that they just made up. Judicial activism at it’s worst. Sheesh!
Martin
Fuck that weak Mancow shit. I know a few guys that speak fluent Farsi. I think grabbing Hannity from a nondescript van and giving him 6 courses in the back of some abandoned warehouse would do wonders for his disposition.
Surely Hannity is cool with fraternity pranks.
Joshua Norton
Probably. He’s no doubt been listing to Rush and is afraid all her relatives will throw tortillas and shoot off their guns in celebration.
Brachiator
@Anne Laurie:
Say it ain’t so! Not Stephens! Heck, not even Scalia…. Oxfordians.
I guess this explains why Scalia is so big on the text of the Constitution and original intent. The problem with this line of thinking is that inevitably, most Oxfordians have an image of the Bard writing perfect texts, which will ultimately be included in “The Works of Shakespeare.” But Sweet William was a working playwright and the versions of the plays that we have (which have been smoothed out by editors) are clearly the works of a man of the theater, who played to the audience, tailored roles for specific actors, tinkered with the text to get the right balance, etc. He was not the scholar poet of Scalia’s fantasies.
invisible_hand
i love how “sex, race, and ethnicity” is only a concern when the person in question is female and not white. it’s as if a male, caucasian justice of european descent has no sex, race, or ethnicity.
the thing is they do! it’s just that theirs’ are the dominant ones, so it’s not “bias,” it’s the status quo!
Dennis-SGMM
@invisible_hand:
That’s because male Caucasians sprang full-blown from the head of Zeus, silly. Their insights are the best of our insights because they are the best of us. Just ask them.
Mayken
@geg6: You know, I was actually disappointed in the books. The HBO series is so much better done than the books IMNSHO. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve read each of them cover to cover in short order but I think she is a bit heavy-handed and the director of the series is much more subtle. I care more about the on-screen characters than I do the ones in the books. I do like some of her decisions about the characters arcs than the tv series so far. We shall see where they go with it.
Just my $.02
Little Dreamer
@Anne Laurie:
The de Veres are NOT nobodies. They are very special people, descended from dragons and angels and are very important in the conspiracy world. Hehe!
zoe kentucky in pittsburgh
GOP hates affirmative action because they don’t know how to do it right– if Michael Steele isn’t the embodiment of bad, superficial affirmative action I don’t know who is.
Barbara
I wonder what Judge Winter thinks about his former clerks going on the record about other judges he works with. I wonder if his clerk is channeling comments he made about those judges. This is something that simply wasn’t done in the circuit I worked in.
In any event, Judge Winter’s ideological bias is so well entrenched it’s probably invisible to both him and his clerks.
Comrade Darkness
@Anne Laurie: To my mind, any reasonably educated person in this day & age still pretending that some titled nothing must have been the “real” motivating force behind the master showman known to us as Shakespeare, because, you know, only someone from the better classes, mumble mumble, is either a joker or a twit.
But they are unbiased to a fault, of course.
This now begs the question. Do Scalia and Stevens also think LaRocca invented jazz?
Rick Massimo
Incorrect. Their other option is to smear Sotomayor and the process for the next however-many months, thus flashing the Batsignal to
the countrytheir base that now the Supreme Court joins the White House, Congress and free elections as American institutions that actually hate America and are not to be trusted. WOLVERINES!JGabriel
@zoe kentucky in pittsburgh:
You’re confusing “affirmative action” with “tokenism”.
lysias
I think we can be pretty sure Alito didn’t get a summa cum laude at Princeton, or we would have heard about it during his confirmation hearings. As a matter of fact, we didn’t even hear about a magna cum laude or a cum laude, did we?
binzinerator
John, racial resentment is all that most conservatives have ever had.
Just look at the demographics that conservatism appeals to, just look at who the GOP has intentionally tried to appeal to in the past 40 years. It’s not just the Southern strategy, but also the creation of cultural memes such as ‘cadillac welfare queens’ (aka a nigger in a pimpmobile with a dozen illegitimate kids by different fathers who lives off of white taxpayers), and how conservatives love to describe illegal immigrants as ‘illegals’ because it defines brown people as unlawful, not their immigration.
Racial resentment is at the very core of conservatism. Everything else is used to excuse or justify it. That’s what most of their ‘fiscal prudence’ bullshit is about. Conservative fiscal prudence means you can be openly resentful of the niggers and mexicans and other lazy dark people who take money from the pockets of real (i.e. white) americans via librul government social programs. Conservatives deeply resent it when people they despise because of RACE get any sort of break, even if it benefits everyone in the long run. And if those breaks constitute an attempt at fairness, at finding an equilibrium of equitability — that is all the more reason for them to oppose it. For bigots anything that makes things more equitable is resented. They don’t want fair. What they really want is apartheid.
FFS what do you think most of conservatives have in mind when they sit athwart history yelling stop? It’s not rapid changes in technology, transportation or communications that they can’t stand.
Wile E. Quixote
@burnspesq
She’ll have a hard time wrestling them out of Alito’s mouth.
Wile E. Quixote
@Justin
Yah, big deal, Dick Cheney does stuff like that all of the time, except with cute puppies, kittens and if his handlers can wrangle it, orphans.
chrome agnomen
you know, maybe Rush is really just working for us.
nah.