Columnists Praise, Defend Sotomayor

Joshua Frazer — June 8, 2009 – 1:39 pm | Obama | Women's Issues Comments (0) Add a comment

In light of President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, there has been an outpouring of positive press for the nominee. Columnists and interest groups have both praised Sotomayor’s judicial record, and defended her in from ad hominem attacks by Conservative pundits.  Below are some of the top columns from throughout the media reflecting on the Sotomayor nomination.

Lewis Diuguid from The Kansas City Star says that Sotomayor will bring much diversity to the court given both her gender and ethnic background, “But what she also will bring to the job, once confirmed by the Senate, is her  uniqueness as a woman of color. She will be only the third woman to serve on the  court among what would be 111 justices in the body’s history and will join Ruth  Bader Ginsburg as a sitting female jurist. That can’t be taken lightly. Women, who make up more than half the U.S.  population, add a lot to the workforce, and the Supreme Court desperately needs  that input. Women often think and approach problems differently from men. They view the world’s challenges and intricacies differently. The male-dominated court needs that insight in these difficult times.”

John Ridley’s column on Huffington Post takes aim at former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s comments on Sotomayor, “The same anti-same-sex marriage, anti-affirmative action cadre can flower into the biggest supporters of “equality” the minute they get a whiff of minority  empowerment.”

Jason Linkins from Huffington Post slams Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for insinuating that he would vote against Sotomayor simply because then-Senator Obama voted against then-nominee Samuel Alito in 2006. However, according to Linkins, Obama had made comments as a Senator explaining why Alito’s ideology conflicted with his own, thus leading him to vote against the confirmation. Linkins sums up Graham’s position nicely, “What’s unclear here is whether Graham truly intends to base his decision on whether Sotomayor’s ‘ideology and philosophy differ[s] from his own’—which would actually be the application of scrutiny—or whether it will simply be a knee-jerk response to Obama’s previous vote, which has nothing to do with scrutinizing Sotomayor. The two concepts seem to be conflated with one another.”

The New York Times’ politics blog, The Caucus, is keeping track of the Sotomayor nomination process, and has published some updated polling numbers, “The Quinnipiac poll found 55 percent of voters approve of Judge Sotomayor’s nomination, while 54 percent of Americans surveyed by Gallup and 50 percent of those polled by the AP said they would like to see the Senate confirm the nomination when they hold hearings sometime this summer.”

Bob Herbert, columnist from The New York Times, focuses on the hypocrisy from right wing pundits and leaders. According to Herbert, in the eyes of the right wing, “There is no level of achievement sufficient to escape the stultifying bonds of bigotry. It is impossible to be smart enough or accomplished enough.”

Herbert notes the irony in the situation that has Rush Limbaugh and Tom Tancredo bringing race to the forefront of the nomination debate, “Suddenly these hideously pompous and self-righteous white males of the right are all concerned about racism. They’re so concerned that they’re fully capable of finding it in places where it doesn’t for a moment exist. Not just finding it, but being outraged by it to the point of apoplexy. Oh, they tell us, this racism is a bad thing!”

The Washington Post’s Editorial Board criticizes the right’s reaction to the nomination, “because it is difficult to dismiss her academic credentials and her professional experience, some on the right have resorted to the politics of personal destruction.”

The Post suggests that there are far better ways to debate a nominee’s fitness for the position without resorting to personal attacks, including Karl Rove’s comment on PBS that, “I know lots of stupid people who went to Ivy League schools.”

 

Comments

There are no comments for this entry