The Brilliance of Obama's SCOTUS Pick
Some people are baffled by President Obama's pick of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court of the United States. She doesn't have a record to judge! She's not the liberal counter balance to Roberts and Alito! She's...well, we just don't know!
The fact that Sotomayor doesn't have any standout opinions is kind of why she was picked, or at least PART of what led to her nomination. She graduated with highest possible honors from Princeton and Yale and has been a judge for years and years so I am not worried about her intellectual heft or ability to hold her own against other jurors.
Now let's talk politics: There's no question that nominating her shores up even more support among two key constituencies for the Dems (Hispanics and women) and it provides an opportunity for the Republicans to look even more out of touch and hostile to those same constituents. So far, they're nibbling at the bait by saying she's dopey and argumentative. But since she doesn't have any controversial decisions in her past (in fact, she upheld a NUMBER of decisions near and dear to conservatives) they have little if any substantive argument against her nomination. That means they'll be hard pressed to mount mush of a real opposition.
Obama wins again.
Let's see how far Republicans really want to go with this. This will be a real test of who is actually guiding that party: Limbaugh and his purposely inciteful speech, or actual elected leaders who have ideological differences with the president. The latter doesn't have much of a fight to pick with Sotomayor and Obama knows that. So, we get a summer of the GOP infighting on how to oppose this nominee they don't really have a problem with and Obama gets his pick anyway. I love it.
