Republicans have been afraid of Judge Sotomayor for a long time

[HopeOverFear]

The Judge They Feared

Republicans have worried about a Sotomayor nomination for a long time. They knew that her legal talents and personal story would make it difficult for them to stop her from sitting on the court.

In 1998, then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, decided to delay the vote on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to sit on the United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. The reason was simple: Republicans feared that if Judge Sotomayor were quickly seated on the Court of Appeals, she would rise to the top of President Bill Clinton’s shortlist of nominees for the Supreme Court in the event that Justice John Paul Stevens retired. Ultimately Judge Sotomayor was approved for her seat on the Court of Appeals, and 11 years later, she’s been nominated for the Supreme Court.

Why did the Republicans in 1998 so fear the prospect of a Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor? For the same reasons they do today. Sonia Sotomayor is a powerful woman with a powerful story, who represents in many ways the arc of Latino struggle in this country. Her nomination Tuesday by President Barack Obama has the potential to galvanize and strengthen Latino voters in this country and to firmly lock the Latino vote into the Democratic Party column in a way that may be irreversible for a generation or more.

But what should not be lost amid the political calculation is how truly historic and important this nomination is for Latinos, who constitute 15 percent of the U.S. population. The appointment of a Latino to the Supreme Court is long overdue. As the Hispanic National Bar Association pointed out in a recent news release, there are more than 82 Latino federal judges, including 14 on the federal courts of appeal. Nevertheless, Latino lawyers are underrepresented as partners in our nation’s law firms, on law faculties and on the bench.

Moreover, Judge Sotomayor perfectly captures President Obama’s campaign promise to appoint a judge with “empathy,” a word that has been picked over and analyzed in an effort to get away from the irreducible truth that judges are people, too. They have their own experiences and their own stories. And those experiences influence their worldview and their sense of how the law does and should work in the lives of litigants who come before the court.

Judge Sotomayor’s personal story is deeply compelling. In a year when Americans have wrapped their minds around the concept of a black president whose mother was from Kansas and father from Africa, and a first lady who’s the Chicago-bred daughter of a working-class dad and a stay-at-home mom, Judge Sotomayor’s story is another from the central casting office of 21st-century politics. She is the daughter of parents who moved from Puerto Rico to New York, and her childhood was firmly working class. Her father was a laborer, her mother a nurse; they worked hard to send their daughter to private Catholic schools. She dreamed of becoming Nancy Drew and then Perry Mason. A diagnosis of diabetes at age 8 could have restricted her dreams but seems to only have fueled them. She was a bright kid, hardworking like her parents, and ambitious. She went on to Princeton University, and then Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the law review. She distinguished herself as a New York City prosecutor, and later as a partner in a law firm working on copyright infringement.

[Skink]

1. Obama came close in Texas this time.

not that I approve of playing politics but a blue Texas anybody?

[SemiCharmedQuark]

7. The Texas borders, where many Hispanics (including my family) are, was blue this last election.

[uponit7771]

10. Have to take care of Fort Worth and Texas will be blue, Fort Worth is 600k people who vote KKKon...

....mostly

[northernlights]

2. she's an obstructionist's nightmare

Any muck they fling will somehow bounce back and stick to them. Shit on a boomerang!

Potentially blue Texas, blue Arizona, blue Florida.

I just read Turdley's abundantly redundant attempt to characterize her as lacking "intellectual firepower" and complaining about her failure to display a sweeping view of the law in any of her decisions. Apparently they read "like briefs."

In other words, she wisely left no philosophical paper trail for the obstructionists to grab onto. I guess that's a hard concept for a total blowhard to grasp. Or does he seriously believe that her accomplishments are due to AA?!?!

[Cha]

6. And, that's all they are..

"obstructionists". That's all they know how to do..that and attack with their arsenal of slime.

[uponit7771]

9. Yeap, they'll further stank themselves up with being small tent folk

[AspenRose]

3. She's all-American.

More American, I dare say, than those idiots on the right.

I love it! :loveya:

[Colobo]

12. Yep!

[LiberalFighter]

4. Why weren't they afraid of her when GHW Bush nominated her?

[FrenchieCat]

5. Because they wanted the credit of putting a Latina on the Fed Bench......

and at the time, she was simply a rising star, but not a risen threat?

Who appointed Justice Souter? Do you know?

[Cha]

8. Big bush appointed Souter..

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103694193

And, he had a hand in Sonia Sotomayor's nomination but only nominally.

<snip>

"Sotomayor's nomination battle began in 1997, five years after President George H.W. Bush, following the suggestion of New York Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, nominated her to the Southern District Court of New York. With a minimum of political fuss, she became the first Hispanic federal judge in the state. Nominated to the Appeals Court by President Bill Clinton in the summer of 1997, she was overwhelmingly approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee — including its then chairman, Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah. But Mississippi's Trent Lott, then the GOP leader, prevented the full Senate from taking up the nomination by using a "secret hold," a procedure that allows a Senator to prevent a motion from reaching the Senate floor for a vote.

Lott took the action primarily because of rumors — entirely unfounded, it turned out — that Clinton was trying to fast-track Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, a tactic his predecessor had used to elevate Clarence Thomas. The rumors were in turn based on speculation that liberal Justice John Paul Stevens was about to retire; he remains on the court to date. Rush Limbaugh at the time warned that Sotomayor was being put on a "rocket ship" to the Supreme Court. (See the top 10 Supreme Court nomination battles.)"

<more>
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1901028,00.html

[jazzjunkysue]

11. GOP enters 7 stages of grief over Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court justice nomination

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/05/27/2009-05-27_gop_enters_7_stage_of_grief_ove_sotomayors_supreme_court_nomination.html
GOP enters 7 stages of grief over Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court justice nomination

Read more: "GOP enters 7 stages of grief over Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court justice nomination" - http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/05/27/2009-05-27_gop_enters_7_stage_of_grief_ove_sotomayors_supreme_court_nomination.html#ixzz0GkWxDo5J&A

The right-wing reaction to Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court was as swift, as it was scattershot, encompassing, it would seem, all 7 stages of grief.

SHOCK AND DENIAL

MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan said the Yale Law grad was "not that intelligent."

ANGER AND BARGAINING

Conservative shock jock Rush Limbaugh predictably pulled no punches.

He called Sotomayor a "horrible choice" and "a racist ... or reverse racist," because she once used controversial words to show how she used her mind and ethnic upbringing to climb from the South Bronx projects to the courts.

Read more: "GOP enters 7 stages of grief over Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court justice nomination" - http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/05/27/2009-05-27_gop_enters_7_stage_of_grief_ove_sotomayors_supreme_court_nomination.html#ixzz0GkX9VJSe&A
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