Obama picks Sotomayor to replace Souter

President Barack Obama today introduced U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York as his selection to replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter of New Hampshire. (Whitehouse.gov)

This is probably as close to a slam dunk as President Obama could have gotten. Thus far,  pundits have praised the selection of someone with such a wealth of high level judicial experience. That could work against her as well as there is one heck of a long paper trail for Republicans to dig through.

She has however, been seen as a rising star since her nomination to the appeals court in 1998, so they are not likely to dig anything up that has not already been hashed out publicly. I’m sure there will be some hiccups. Ranking Judiciary Committee Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, who has plenty of not so well hidden skeletons himself, will see to that.

Despite that, I don’t see people such as Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Sen. Sue Collins (R-ME) or Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) supporting a filibuster on her nomination after they voted for her confirmation 11 years ago. They may vote against her in committee and/or on the floor but I don’t see them supporting an attempt to keep her nomination from a vote.

Thinkprogress has an article detailing the right's attempt to portray Judge Sotomayor as a “liberal Harriet Miers.” For full coverage of who exactly said what click on through.

It is a ridiculous argument starting with the fact that she has more federal bench experience than any Court nominee in memory. As SCOTUSBlog points out, women and minority candidates have a long history of being described as not smart enough for the job. It is also something that may generate an intense amount of backlash, if they wish to pursue it, from two groups the Republican party is allegedly desperate to court: women and Hispanics.

Here is some footage of them sticking their collective feet in their mouths already:

Class, do you know why this worked with Harriet Miers? Yes….you in the back. That’s correct…..because it wasn’t the presumed opposition, in that case the Democrats, doing the hack job. It was the people everyone assumed would support her. The Democrats were more than happy to let Jeff Sessions and company hack away at Harriet Miers intellectual fitness because it wasn’t they who would come out looking badly if it went awry.

If the Democrats were to attack Judge Sotomayor’s intellectual “heft” it might be a different story this time as well. But they won’t and not least because the woman has been a Federal Appeals Judge for 11 years! (Which, not coincidentally, is 11 years longer, by itself, than Harriet Miers total judicial experience, federal or otherwise.)

I understand that the right is still smarting from the fact that one of the reasons that Miers was nominated was that Sen. Harry Reid thought it might be a good idea. I think they also need to realize, as we Democrats do, that it wasn’t a vast left wing conspiracy when that happened, it was just Harry using his political judgment, which we well know is severely lacking.

Ultimately, the Republicans will cut their own throats with women and Hispanics if they go to far in opposition here. I realize they are capable of it but hold out hope that some of the relatively sane ones, such as Hatch and Collins and maybe even Judd Gregg, will save the party from themselves.

No filibuster will happen here. Fireworks? Perhaps. I think the nominee attracts close to, if not more than, 70 votes on the floor though.

I could be wrong. ;)

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern