The Democratic war on a Hispanic nominee

Much is made of the opposition by some conservatives and a few Republicans to the nomination of Judge Sotomayor. They are painted as denigrating a wonderful personal American story. They are disparaged as “anti-Hispanic.” The (liberal) media commentariat ominously warns that opposition to Sotomayor will hurt Republicans with Hispanic voters and drive them to the Democrats. They then piously urge the conservatives not to oppose her.

I stand by my previous position that I think Republicans should go easy on her. Focus not on defining her, but on using her to define Obama. She will get confirmed, and Republicans should not waste political capital targeting her as such.

That said, the hypocrisy of the Democrats and the, at best, ignorance but, more likely, willful connivance of the media never cease to amaze me. Does no one remember the 2001 nomination by George W. Bush of Miguel Estrada to the D.C. Circuit, generally seen as a whistle stop for him on the way to the Supreme Court (as the Democrats at the time agreed)? The Democrats derailed that nomination with a filibuster after a vicious campaign designed to vilify Estrada and attack his “racial authenticity.” The Democrat obstructionists refused even to give him an up-or-down vote.

Estrada is a brilliant man and a genuine American success story, at least as much as Judge Sotomayor. Among other things, he graduated from Columbia University (magna cum laude; Phi Beta Kappa) and Harvard Law (magna cum laude) after joining his divorced mother in this country from Honduras as a 17-year old not speaking much English. He was an editor on the Law Review and clerked at the federal court of appeals in New York and the Supreme Court for Justice Kennedy. He, too, earned the usual honors and accolades to his strong intellect.

He then worked for a Wall Street law firm before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney during the first Bush administration. He then joined the Clinton administration as an assistant to the Solicitor General. When he was nominated to the court of appeals by George W. Bush, he was given a unanimous well-qualified rating by the ABA.

What did the Democrats fear? They did not want Bush to put the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court. Especially one who sees himself not as a member of a tribalist identity group but as an American. He would not make the kind of comments for which Judge Sotomayor has come to be notorious.