Obama's Pick Is a Winner, Already

http://www.politickerny.com/3706/obamas-pick-winner-already

Obama's Pick Is a Winner, Already
By Joe Conason



Choosing Sonia Sotomayor as his first nominee to the United States Supreme Court will allow Barack Obama to prove three important things. As a politician, he is not afraid of a fight. As a constitutional lawyer, he is willing and able to defend his conception of that living document. And as president, he is prepared to brush aside the phony consensus of Washington’s gossipy elite.

Whatever battle ensues over the nomination of Ms. Sotomayor, a judge currently serving on New York’s Second Circuit federal appeals court and a woman with working-class Puerto Rican roots in the Bronx, the president should welcome it, because he cannot lose politically. If he wins, as he almost certainly will, then he will have earned the gratitude of Hispanic voters across the country for putting their “first” on the nation’s highest bench. If somehow he loses to a Republican filibuster, then those same voters will surely inflict their wrath on his adversaries.

Having chosen an affirmative-action candidate to chair the Republican National Committee (and another, years ago, to occupy a seat on the Supreme Court), G.O.P. leaders could probably find a way to permit Ms. Sotomayor to ascend without mounting bitter, racially divisive opposition. A Republican president, George Herbert Walker Bush, originally nominated her to the federal bench, with support from the two New York senators at the time, hard-line conservative Alfonse D’Amato and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, no doctrinaire liberal. Among the conservatives who voted to seat her on the Second Circuit was Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, without significant opposition.

But the same impulses that have long driven the Republican Party toward ethnic polarization and immigrant-bashing seem certain to infect its opposition to her—in ways that can only benefit the Democrats and Mr. Obama in elections to come.

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Finally, by choosing Ms. Sotomayor, the president demonstrated his disdain for the obnoxious whispering campaign against her that began in a dubious article in The New Republic, migrated to the National Review Web site (which pronounced her “dumb and obnoxious”) and predictably found its way onto the pages of The Washington Post. Only weeks ago, the participants in that campaign were congratulating themselves for killing her nomination. Thankfully, Mr. Obama ignored the decree of the capital’s gossips and made up his own mind. Let this occasion be the first of many.

All of those demographics are paying attention and will note when rabid freepers attack her for all four instead of addressing anything of substance.

...I believe that after all their whining, she will be soundly confirmed.

to deflate the Dem base. If they painted her as a fair, solid, middle of the road choice and succeeded in doing that the Dem base would have been left saying "how come the Left get middle of the road while Pukes get right wing extremists?".

But they aint smart. Instead they attack that she is a minority, a woman, etc. and alienate themselves further.

Love that he's not swayed by the "dumb pbnoxious" whispering campaign.

has had my respect, consistently, over the years.

"Choosing Sonia Sotomayor as his first nominee to the United States Supreme Court will allow Barack Obama to prove three important things. As a politician, he is not afraid of a fight. As a constitutional lawyer, he is willing and able to defend his conception of that living document. And as president, he is prepared to brush aside the phony consensus of Washington’s gossipy elite."

Thanks, babylonsister! This is a lot of what more than a few DUers were sayin', yesterday:)

And, just who did these people want?..

Finally, by choosing Ms. Sotomayor, the president demonstrated his disdain for the obnoxious whispering campaign against her that began in a dubious article in The New Republic, migrated to the National Review Web site (which pronounced her “dumb and obnoxious”) and predictably found its way onto the pages of The Washington Post. Only weeks ago, the participants in that campaign were congratulating themselves for killing her nomination. Thankfully, Mr. Obama ignored the decree of the capital’s gossips and made up his own mind. Let this occasion be the first of many."