Yesterday we who follow such things were presented with an almost perfect example of how the moderate wing of the GOP is wrong.
It starts… well I start it with Byron York’s piece:
Wherein he reminds us of another Latino court appointment… and how that ended:
Estrada’s nomination for a federal judgeship set off alarm bells among Democrats. There is a group of left-leaning organizations — People for the American Way, NARAL, the Alliance for Justice, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the NAACP, and others — that work closely with Senate Democrats to promote Democratic judicial nominations and kill Republican ones. They were particularly concerned about Estrada.
In November, 2001, representatives of those groups met with Democratic Senate staff. One of those staffers then wrote a memo to Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin, informing Durbin that the groups wanted to stall Bush nominees, particularly three they had identified as good targets. “They also identified Miguel Estrada as especially dangerous,” the staffer added, “because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment. They want to hold Estrada off as long as possible.”
It was precisely the fact that Estrada was Hispanic that made Democrats and their activist allies want to kill his nomination. They were determined to deny a Republican White House credit, political and otherwise, for putting a first-rate Hispanic nominee on the bench.
We all know how that ended… Estrada… still with nothing to hide, having done nothing wrong… having nothing in his history… or speaking to call into question… grew tired of the Democratic filibuster and withdrew.
Byron York reminds us: “that was how Democrats treated the last high-level Hispanic court nominee. Think about that when you watch their lovefest with Sonia Sotomayor.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124354585930464037.html
Peggy Noonan advises us… the GOP to ‘Grow Up”
Some, and they are idiots, look at Judge Sotomayor and say: attack, attack, kill. A conservative activist told the New York Times, “We need to brand her.” Another told me a fight is needed to excite the base.
She advises us that while true, the Democrats pound our nominees into the ground… they feel bad about it later:
A few—very few—agitate to go at Judge Sotomayor as the Democrats went after Robert Bork in 1987. The abuse suffered by that good man is a still suppurating wound within the GOP, but it is also a wound for the Democrats, the worst kind, a self-inflicted one. They damaged our national political culture and lowered their own standing with their assault, and their victory left them looking not strong and uncompromising but mean and ferocious. And on some level they know it. Ask Ted Kennedy, if he had it to do over again, if he would repeat all his intemperate and unjust words about “Bob Bork’s America” and “back-alley abortions” and blacks turned away from lunch counters. He’d be a fool if he said yes. He damaged himself in that battle.
Ms Noonan would have us feel sorry for Teddy… when Bob Bork is the one that took it in his political rear end.
This is of course… 1000% total BS… this is slave talk… this is defeatist… and much more to the point:
This is the very same attitude and advice that kept the Republicans in the minority for 40 years.
I say no… I say never… I say attack, attack, attack!
If Sotomayor isn’t made to answer to charges of racism…
If Sotomayor isn’t made to answer why she is overturned more than upheld…
If Sotomayor isn’t made to explain every square inch of her personal life…
If little bitsy Sonia isn’t made to cry at least once… then the GOP deserves to lose and continue to lose until we get some people elected that have the balls to play the game of Washington politics the way our opponents play it.
Ms Noonan: you and your intellectual brothers kept us, the Republican Party in the minority for 40 years.
NEVER AGAIN!
