No percentage in opposing Sotomayor

Peggy Noonan has a column today more or less supporting her fellow New Yorker, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, even though they would likely disagree on issues such as affirmative action. It does seem that President Obama could have done a lot worse. He could have picked (and apparently almost did) a pro-abortion culture warrior like Judge Diane Wood. John Yoo, the Bush administration lawyer who found legal justification for waterboarding, thinks Wood would have been a better pick. I don't think Yoo should be prosecuted for his Justice Department work, as some liberals advocate, but he should be ignored.

Conservatives complain with justice that liberals have never played a price for their vicious attacks on Clarence Thomas. But that's no reason to mount a similar campaign against Sotomayor, another minority who grew up poor and has a compelling personal history. And it makes no political sense for conservatives to abandon the Reagan-Bush-McCain approach of turning immigrants into citizens, while taking every other opportunity to alienate America's largest and fastest growing minority.

Comments

[Matthew]

Paying a price on Clarence Thomas?

Are you trying to say that politicians "should pay a price" on an issue that was a very legitimate issue?

Tailhook was brought to the surface. Packwood (though a Rep) was forced out. Clinton was dogged by sexual harrassment until Impeachment killed it once & for all.

Remember w/o the Thomas revelations. None of the others would have come to the surface...or if they did, it would have been MUCH later. Remember a women being made to feel like a piece of meet was very much in the business culture at that time.

[Bob Conner]

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The sexual harassment case against Thomas was unproved and seemed to me overblown. But I was referring more to the racial attacks, which have continued throughout his tenure, accusing him of being an Uncle Tom because he doesn't toe the liberal line, and the unfounded attacks on his intelligence

[Brian]

People said at the time that Clarence Thomas was not qualified to be on the Supreme Court. And there's little in his record as a justice to suggest that such people were wrong. From accounts I've read, he asks few questions from the bench, writes few opinions and generally just follows Antonin Scalia.

By contrast, Scalia, whose perhaps even a more right-wing culture warrior, is generally seen to have a very impressive legal mind. And he can hardly be accused of, to use the canard you throw out, toeing the liberal line.

It's a sad commentary on the American appetite that when the discussion was about Thomas' qualifications, few cared, but as soon as sex talk got involved, it became an instant national spectacle.

[Bob Conner]

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Thomas is quiet on the bench but has written plenty of good opinions and does not just follow Scalia. I don't believe you can substantiate your criticisms on those grounds. I suspect that the accounts you've read are just ax-grinding from his ideological opponents, who criticize Thomas more than Scalia precisely because he is black yet unwilling to accept the policies that liberals think all blacks should espouse.

[Brian]

Ah yes, the old canard that any criticism of a black conservative is inherently illegitimate and can't possibly be based on anything fair. Gotcha!

[Bob Conner]

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Your earlier comment suggested that Thomas' record on the Supreme Court shows him to have been unqualified for it. I do not believe you can substantiate that, or that it is "based on anything fair." Even Slate's very liberal legal analyst, Dahlia Lithwick, disagrees with your position in her recent column:
http://www.slate.com/id/2219253/