GOP Battle over Sotomayor

Eric Kleefield of Talking Points Memo highlights the interesting battle within the GOP over how to respond to President Obama's selection of Sonia Sotomayor to replace departing Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court.

After a week of escalating race and gender rhetoric from the right over the Sotomayor nomination, it's now looking like some in the Republican Party -- those concerned with actually getting elected -- have become alarmed by the political damage the more extreme members of their party may be doing and are moving to rein in the vitriol. It's the starkest example yet of an interesting division within the right, one that has been apparent for some time, but which the Sotomayor nomination has not only crystalized but accelerated: the right-wing bomb-throwers obsessed with ideological purity versus the right-wing pragmatists who want the party to actually win an election again some day.

Make no mistake -- all of these people are staunch conservatives. While the bomb-throwers include folks like Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and a colorful cast of other players, the practical folks include the likes of Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), RNC chairman Michael Steele, and pundit Peggy Noonan.

Cornyn, as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, was sharply critical of both Limbaugh and Gingrich in an interview on NPR. Steele urged Republicans to challenge the nomination on substantive grounds. Noonan went a step further and urged Senate GOP members to "play grown-up."

Don't grill and grandstand, summon and inform. Show the respect that expresses equality and the equality that is an expression of respect. Ask and listen, get the logic, explain where you think it wrong. Fill the airwaves with thoughtful exchanges.

It says something about the state of the GOP that one of its leading advocates in the media feels compelled to plead for seriousness.

UPDATE: Charles M. Blow of The New York Times highlights the absurd hypocrisy of Gingrich, Limbaugh and Tancredo crying "racism."

The same Newt Gingrich who once said that bilingual education was like teaching “the language of living in a ghetto” tweeted that Sotomayor is a “Latina woman racist.” The same Rush Limbaugh who once told a black caller to “take that bone out of your nose and call me back” called Sotomayor a “reverse racist.” The same Tom Tancredo, a former congressman, who once called Miami, which has a mostly Hispanic population, “a third world country” said that Sotomayor “appears to be a racist.” This is rich.

--Ballard Burgher