Playing Good Cop/Bad Cop with Sotomayor?
The Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are either playing a very delicate game of good cop/bad cop with President Obama's nominee to the nation's highest court, Sonia Sotomayor, or they're fracturing as a conference and a large number of Rs could end up voting for her.
Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the panel, came out swinging in his opening statement:
“I fear that this thinking empathy standard is another step down the road to a liberal, activist, results-oriented, relativistic world, where laws lose their fixed meaning, unelected judges set policy, Americans are seen as members of separate groups rather than as simply Americans, where the constitutional limits on government power are ignored when politicians want to buy out private companies,” Sessions said. “I feel we've reached a fork in the road, I think, and there are stark differences. I want to be clear. I will not vote for, and no senator should vote for, an individual nominated by any president who is not fully committed to fairness and impartiality toward every person who appears before them.”
That fork in the road could have been in his own party. If Sessions went the base-pleasing route, his colleague Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, took the opposite tact. Less than an hour later, Graham predicted Sotomayor would sail through.
“Unless you have a complete meltdown, you will be confirmed. I do not think you will [have a meltdown],” Graham said. “My Republican colleagues who vote against you, I assure you, can vote for a Hispanic nominee; they're just unnerved by some of your speeches.”
Graham is known, at times, for being a bit of a maverick and his comments may have offended some party conservatives but few of the Republicans on the panel seemed inclined to criticize Sotomayor head on. Republicans and Democrats alike praised her compelling personal story and, for the most part, her qualifications. What criticism arose was mostly over Sotomayor's speeches: the now-infamous “wise Latina” and another to the Puerto Rican ACLU where she talked about the importance of foreign laws.
“The factors that will influence her decisions apparently include her gender and Latina heritage and foreign legal concepts that, as she said, get her creative juices going,” said Senator Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican.
If anything the panel's Republicans focused their fire on Obama himself and past Democratic filibusters of other judges. Many harped on Obama's stated desire for a judge with “empathy” a trigger word implying, to them, a judge who legislates from the bench. Others, such as Utah's Orrin Hatch, spent much of their allotted 10 minutes bitterly reliving the days when Senator Obama voted against President Bush's nominees to the bench, John Roberts and Samuel Alito.
“Democratic senators, for example, offer us proof of Judge Sotomayor's moderation, that she has agreed with her Republican appointed Second Circuit colleagues 95 percent of the time,” Hatch said. “Joined by then-Senator Obama, however, many of those same Democratic senators voted against Justice Samuel Alito's confirmation, even though he had voted with his Democrat-appointed Third Circuit colleagues 99 percent of the time during a much longer Appeals Court career. And although Justice Alito also received the ABA's highest rating, Senator Obama joined 24 other Democrats in even voting to filibuster his nomination. And when -- and then he joined a total of 42 Democrats in voting against the confirmation of now-Justice Alito. In fact, Senator Obama never voted to confirm a Supreme Court justice. He even voted against a man who administered the oath of presidential office, Chief Justice John Roberts, another distinguished and well-qualified nominee.”
Tomorrow starts the questioning and we'll see if this GOP schizophrenia continues. Will they go easy on her given the foregone nature of the proceedings thus far? Or will they risk alienating Hispanic voters and put her through the ringer? In the meantime, Salon's Mike Madden has some fun with the day's rather dull formalities: for all that, Sotomayor spoke less than seven minutes. And here's some giggles with the number of times words were mentioned and by which side:
Empathy -- 14 mentions all Republican
Filibuster – 3 mentions all Republican in reference to Obama's past votes on other nominees
Racism – never uttered
Latino/Latina – 9 mentions all by Republican members usually quoting Sotomayor's remarks back to her
Foreign – 7 mentions all Republican
Blind – 2 Democratic, 4 Republican
Umpire –5 Democratic, 1 Republican
Ball – 6 Democratic
Strike – 5 Democratic, 1 Republican
Alito – 2 Democratic, 4 Republican
Roberts -- 4 Democratic, 3 Republican
Estrada – 1 Democratic, 3 Republican
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1
judge who legislates from the bench
Again, the problem with this formulation is that every instance where the Conservatives disagree with her rulings it was for failure to legislate from the bench and to accept legislation as written instead rewriting it based on intent. -
2
Wow. Just when Palin exits (for the moment anyway) the Rs provide us with more popcorn-worthy entertainment. Keep it coming. Not only am I entertained, the country will be safe from your willful stupidity next election too.
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3
JNS: Good summary of today's action. I hope that you can score interviews with key players and try not to repeat the SP debacle. Please. Also.
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Just curious: hoe many mentions of "strict constructionist" and "interpretation"? -
4
hoe = how. PIMF.
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5
"I fear that this thinking empathy standard is another step down the road to a liberal, activist, results-oriented, relativistic world..."
AH-HAH!
Now who wouldn't have been able to figure this one out?
Forgive my total drippage of snarkery, but isn't this exactly what Republicans are about these days?
Fock them results! Who the hell needs those...
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6
kbanginmotown:
zero mentions of "strict constructionist."
1 of interpretation.
Kyl: "How does President Obama propose judges deal with these hard cases? Does he want them to use judicial precedent, canons of construction and other accepted tools of interpretation that judges have used for centuries? No? President Obama says, and I quote, that in those difficult cases, the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge's heart."
JNS-
6.1
Does he want them to use judicial precedent
Ha! The day that anyone in the GOP actually believes in judicial precedent is the day Justice Scalia sprouts wings and flies loop-de-loops around the Supreme Court building.
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7
The GOP leadership isn't going to do much of anything; many of them are completely incompetent. The only way to block her is for others to get involved, and how to do it is described here. It's really not that difficult, it's just that even the lower-level GOP leaders and the leaders of the opposition to BHO in general are mostly lame.
And, if you're perplexed why anyone would oppose her, for just one of the many reasons, here's a quote from the person who was given an award by the group that SS was a member of for six years:
"We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him."
"Liberals" defending calls for genocide begin in 3, 2, 1...
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8
"The GOP leadership isn't going to do much of anything; many of them are completely incompetent.
Not to mention extinct...
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9
JNS:
So what we* want is someone with no heart, no empathy, and absulartly, posilutely, for any reason whatsomever, never gets results.*Ackshually, they, but I'm busy drinking right now...
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10
Oh, yeah, the last thing we want is results-oriented judging... [link here]
As Sheldon Whitehouse pointed out [link here], conservatives favor judicial activism and legislating from the bench when it achieves policy goals they favor. And Cass Sunstein has noted [link here] that the conservatives on the Court are the "activists" by any neutral definition of the term. He also noted, "The Judicial Activism Award, for aggressive use of judicial power, goes to a most surprising winner: Justice Antonin Scalia." Nope, not a surprise, if you know more than buzzwords about the Court.
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11
JNS- You do know, even if you can't report it without a source to quote, that Lindsay's olive branch to Sotomayor had nothing to do with his maverickiness. Johnny boy is up for reelection in Arizona, and he needs that Hispanic vote badly -- period.
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It's funny how the Republicans keep complaining about Obama's rejection of their far right choices for the court, but no mention from the press that Obama supports a more balanced approach for the court instead of these deep partisan divides. Do you even ask these guys if they think a deeply divided court would be bad for the country? A concern our current President clearly shares, evidenced by his own moderate pick.
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I don't ever expect the GOP to do the right thing, tell the truth, put the country first or recognize they live in an alternate universe, but at some point doesn't journalistic balance require that you give their positions a little both sides of the coin scrutiny? -
12
I wonder whether Sotomayor would make a good Supreme Court justice?
Oh wait, I'm sorry. What I meant was:
I'm very curious about the GOP strategy here and whether it will play to their base!
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13
Just as we had thought. That sickly sweet sloppy wet tonguebath JNS gave Palin up in AK, euphemistically called an "interview" (cough), was for a TIME Magazine Cover: The Renegade - July 20, 2009 - Sarah Palin . Can't do real journalism when you want to do a People Mag-type gossip spread.
Time Mag is selling "The Renegade" like they sold "America's Mayor" oh and don't forget that slop job on Ann Coulter too.
She's an outsider!
She has an "ingrained frontier skepticism of authority"!
"If ever there has been a time to gamble on a flimsy résumé, ever a time for the ultimate outsider, this might be it."!
Born to run!Four pages of that kind of slurpy, star-struck garbage. It ends:
So, bye, Alaska! She made her declaration on Independence Day weekend as a symbol, she says, of her new and exhilarating freedom. She's headed to a bookstore, a television set, a convention hall near you, armed with an anti-résumé. Cut loose from her obligations to her huge and awesome homeland, her message remains quintessentially Alaskan. Where she comes from — the last American frontier — the past is irrelevant, the rules are suspended, and limitations are for losers.
Not your finest piece, Jay.
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14
GIven that all of this is kabuki ...
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/05/supreme-court-kabuki-watch
... can I just go on the record that there is sophisticated, engaging kabuki and there is second-rate pap: you be the judge as to which description fits the above.
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15
Will Jay host a drinking game during next round of hearings? Word or phrase?
Will this exchange occur?
Sen Sessions: Judge Sotomayor, I'm just going to ask you one more time - not to belabor the point. The American People need to know your exact position on Roe.
Judge Sotomayor: I think roe is absolutely delish on blini. Toast points are good with it too. -
16
OT, but WTF! For those who've been following Taibbi's war on the Goldmanites, read this:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/13/goldman/index.htmlAnd I'd add this (Friedersdorf not Sully):
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/07/is-a-change-going-to-come.html
Am I the only one seeing the dems playing with some potent combustibles here? The faux-populist wingers are monomaniacally focused on Nov 2010. All blame will fall on the folks in charge, the media will roll over for it, and too many Americans will forget about 2001-2008.
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17
JNS:
I wouldn't call it good cop bad cop. The fact of the matter is that Judge Sotomayor is one of the most qualified people to ever be put up for the Supreme Court, and there will be many Republicans who will vote for her for that reason.
They will throw charges of reverse racism under the guise of "bias" or "empathy" in order to please their base, but at the end of the day the only reason to vote against her is to vote based 100% on political idealogy - and every "no" vote will be seen that way, as a purely political move disregarding all actual standards for a judiciary appointment. Some will, sure. But many won't go that far...or at least won't want to be viewed as going that far.
The thing I'm curious about is when these members get back to their states. FOX News has been pushing pretty hard against her, and with the red meat being tossed out there by the Republican Senators, their base is pretty rabidly against Judge Sotomayor..so what are they going to do to Graham when he gets home if he votes FOR her?
Recall that Sen. Cornyn actually got booed at a Tea Party because of his vote for the TARP funds. That's the Republican base, and they won't be too happy if he votes for a angry-latina-reverse-racist-affirmative-action-pick, which is what they are being fed by all these codewords.
I shall wait and see...and be amused, I'm sure.
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18
"Tack," not "tact." Sailing metaphor. A common error, to be sure, but still an error.
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19
Even some within the caucus can no longer stand the horrific demonization process that they have put into place regarding Sotomayor.
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20
Tack - tact
A common error - Not the first time it's reared its head here at the Swamp.
You would think that at some point 'learning' would come into play.
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21
Leaving the substantive comments to our esteemed panel of experts, I'll just note another picky detail:
"...put her through the ringer" should be "through the wringer".
The "wringer" was that cranked roller thingy on top of old washing machines, that got a lot of water out of clothes, but is widely held to be an unpleasant thing to be put through.
Given the definitions of "ringer" that I'm familiar with, I'm not sure quite what it would mean to be put through one, and it seems I'm too cautious to let my imagination go there. -
22
Spill cheque is know substitute four actuary language skills.
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23
This one has been Kabuki from the git-go. She was the obvious first appointment. She is obviously well qualified. There are plenty of Republican senators who will vote for her--at least Collins and Snowe, anybody,like McCain facing a large hispanic vote in 2010.
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24
Owed to the Spell Checker
I have a spelling checker --
It came with my PC
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure real glad two no.
Its very polished in it's weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when aye rime.To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should be proud.
And we mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaws are knot aloud.And now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know faults with in my cite,
Of none eye am a wear.Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed to bee a joule
The checker poured o'er every word
To Czech sum spelling rule.That's why aye brake in two averse
By righting wants to pleas,
Sow now ewe see why eye dew prays
Such soft wear for pea seas! -
25
Jeffrey Sessions III is now questioning Sotomayor.
If one of the Democrats wanted to introduce the testimony from Sessions failed confirmation hearing (where it came out that he is an incredibly racist person that legislated from the bench) would that be possible? I don't know the rules.
- jnsmall At BLT waiting for @lizzieohreally to buy her a drink. So far everyone, including the bday girl, is late! - 3 hours ago
- jnsmall Had to feed my dog rice this morning after I got to the store to buy dog food and realized I'd left my wallet @ work. It's one of those days - 12 hours ago
- jnsmall A primer on tomorrow's primaries to fill Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/12/07/its-election-time-again/ - 1 day ago
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