I, for one, do not understand republican senator Sessions's concern over the candidate's supposed empathy for the Latinos in the US. After all, senator Sessions harbors special empathy for minority-hating, right-wing, red-necked southern wingnuts, doesn't he ?

Re rbe1: Objection, yo' honah! Asked and answered!

Repubs are darned lucky that they're not going to be able to knock Sotomayor down. She may have an extra dollop of vanilla in her judicial makeup but, all things considered, she's still just plain vanilla, offend-no-one, kind of judge. If she were to be successfully defeated, the next nomination would, in all likelihood, have a lot more "spice" to it. And it would come with both an extra measure of "boy, I'm really pissed off with the 'thugs" from the Dems *and* their newly discovered green shoots of "can do" spirit. Add in Al Franken into the mix (he'll be on the Judicial Committee, among others) and the Repubs would be begging to be carted off to the nearest Zoo, as exhibits of "under-evolved primates"...

It's reached the point now that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who's been occasionally vicious in his criticism of Sotomayor, is now saying, "I honestly think I could vote for her."

Yeah, but he won't...

"All Sotomayor's detractors seem to be doing is annoying Hispanic groups."

This has been my thinking for a while now:

1. Obama picked a nominee who substance is middle-of-the-road enough that he takes heat from the left.

2. Why would he do such a thing?

3. Because it would leave the Rs with nothing left to complain about except her Latino-ness and therefore would piss off the one minority group that the Rs had (at least at one time) some hope of making inroads with.

4. If Obama puts immigration reform on the table in the near furture, the Rs' response will probably guarantee that they don't break double digits in the Latino vote for a generation.

I know exactly where Graham is coming from. My brother, a serious Republican, ran into her at a DC restaurant the other night. They spoke briefly. He came away very impressed. I am beginning to wonder if Obama shouldn't have picked someone who would give Republicans a legitimate reason for concern.

Someone handed Graham a fact sheet breaking down demographics and polling...

What Obama has done is to nominate a slightly left-of-center moderate to replace a slightly left-of-center moderate (who happened to be nominated by one of the fathers of the modern neocon movement!). That she happened to be a) a woman, and b) Latino left rethugs to either attack her womanhood, or her heritage. They chose the latter.

I sometimes wonder if the modern GOP was surreptitiously taken over by liberals in order to destroy it. Nobody could be this stupid.

Well, except for Jim Inhofe.

the barking by the repugnants will not turn to biting, next week -- just returing to baying at the moon...

it's a done deal on señora justice sonia, and not a moment too soon...

Awaken the apathetic conservative base? They're not apathetic. They're almost non-existent. A large part of the base up and left, and all they've got is the base of the base. But the loons who remain are far from apathetic. But they're so damn loony they're effectively powerless, as they're radioactive to mainstream Republicans. And the louder they howl, the more they're driving everyone else away and the more radioactive they become.

But then again, the conservative movement was always heavily exaggerated anyway. People like to call themselves conservative, but at the end of the day, they still expect the government to work.

Does anyone outside of the Palin crowd and nativist crowd want to hear this right now?

"...I honestly think I could vote for her." Sen. Graham (R-SC)
It's not often you get three lies in one sentence; even for a Republican politician.

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