Sonia Sotomayor is a Trap!

President Obama could not have picked a better nominee to the Supreme Court than Sonia Sotomayor. By stating this I don't mean to imply that there is no greater legal mind available to fill David Souter's upcoming vacancy. There very well may be said super judge out there, though such a question is always, like the decisions the Supreme Court justices render, a matter of interpretation. No, what I mean is that by picking Sonia Sotomayor, a perfectly qualified candidate for the court who also happens to be Hispanic and a woman, the president has now set the perfect trap for the opposition party. Don't agree? Consider today's Wall Street Journal article, titled (on its website homepage), "Sotomayor's Record Within Mainstream":

Judge Sonia Sotomayor has built a record on such issues as civil rights and employment law that puts her within the mainstream of Democratic judicial appointees.

So, though she has often "sided with corporate defendants", Sotomayor is slightly left-leaning and will likely do nothing to tip the court's current right-leaning 5-4 balance. Still, many conservatives are rushing to mount what will ultimately prove a futile stand against her. That effort will spell disaster for the Republican party with two key voting constituencies: women and Latinos.

To be clear, it is not because Sotomayor is a Latina that qualifies her to be a Supreme Court Justice, it is because she is a Latina that conservatives should take care before they, like Rush Limbaugh, start attacking her so vociferously. True, politics is a rough business, and Sotomayor is nothing if not capable of standing up for herself, but does the GOP really want this fight? Do they want nationally televised hearings in which their all-white Senate Judiciary Club tries to argue that Sotomayor doesn't possess the intellect of a John Roberts? She may or she may not, but to focus on this question when it is clear that she meets the standards to be considered for the post is something of a public relations nightmare.

Today's Washington Post piece, "First Latina Picked for Supreme Court; GOP Faces Delicate Task in Opposition", sums up the conundrum succinctly enough:

An all-out assault on Sotomayor by Republicans could alienate both Latino and women voters, deepening the GOP's problems after consecutive electoral setbacks. But sidestepping a court battle could be deflating to the party's base and hurt efforts to rally conservatives going forward.

In 2004, George W. Bush took 44% of the Latino vote. In 2008, John McCain received just 31%. We know that Latinos are the fastest growing voting constituency in the country. There are an estimated 45 million Hispanics in the U.S. today. By 2016, there will be 60 million. If Hispanic migration from the Republican party continues, national elections will be even harder to win than they already are.

Women are underrepresented in Congress, but that disparity is more acute within the Republican Party. Just 9.5% of GOP House members are women, and they account for only 10% of all Republican Senators. Perhaps that also helps explain why women, like Hispanics, are fleeing the party. Gallup finds that women are more likely to self-identify as Democrats by a margin of 14% points. All-male discussions of Sotomayor's intellect, when the woman graduated at the top of her class at Princeton, should do nothing to close that widening gap.

So, yes, the GOP needs to watch its step. Mike Huckabee has already stuck his foot in it by calling Sotomayor "Maria." If that is a sign of things to come, the party might as well get on the phone and order its own tombstone.