Big Dogs Weblog

Supreme Politics Of Personal Destruction

by Big Dog on Jul 13, 2009 at 04:51 Political

This week the conformation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor will begin in what will certainly be a media circus. Sotomayor has a lot of explaining to do with regard to remarks she made about a wise Latina making better decisions than a white man. She also has a few questionable associations that must be dealt with. When all is said and done there is no way 40 Republicans can stop her from being confirmed unless Teddy Kennedy is too sick to vote and Robert Byrd has not made it back from his recent illness.

Sotomayor has a few strikes against her and with Harriet Miers like numbers she will have a tough road but she will eventually be confirmed. She will not change the make up of the court even though she is an activist judge who uses her position to address social issues rather than the law.

He recent decision in the Ricci case was overturned by the Supreme Court and it will be one of the topics covered. Frank Ricci is scheduled to be called as a witness. He is the white firefighter who filed a lawsuit for discrimination. The Supreme Court agreed with him that he and all the others who passed the promotion exam were discriminated against contrary to what Sotomayor’s opinion in the case.

The outcome of this is that groups supporting Sotomayor are targeting Ricci. They are working on destroying his reputation by digging into the two other workplace lawsuits he has filed. The bash patrol will try to discredit him so that the bad decision by Sotomayor is ignored while everyone focuses on Ricci and his work history. This is the politics of personal destruction. Ricci is the bad guy because he dared to stand up for his rights and he dared to win and make a liberal judge look like a rookie.

We have seen the politics of destruction with Joe the Plumber. He asked a question that caused Obama to disclose his true intent of redistributing the wealth in this nation. Instead of focusing on that issue the media and several elected officials went after Joe. Some elected officials committed crimes in order to discredit him and the media worked overtime in order to paint him in a bad light while protecting Obama. Joe was harassed endlessly because he dared to ask the sainted one a question. The answer might be one of the reasons Obama is always using a teleprompter. He needs to keep focused on telling you what he wants you to hear while masking his real intent. Off the cuff answers leave him vulnerable.

I am expecting some heated debate in this confirmation process. This woman needs to be hammered about her racist remarks (I have called her a racist for making them but whether she is a racist remains to be seen. The comment though, was a racist one) and she needs to hammered about her associations. She belonged to a women only club. I don’t care because I think people should be able to belong to whatever kind of club they want but judges nominated by Republican presidents seem to be taken to task for such associations by the likes of Ted Kennedy, of all people.

I want the Republicans to bloody her up. I want all of her dirty laundry aired in public and I want the Republicans to be ruthless. We need to live up to the standard that Democrats have established. In an ideal world we could keep her from being confirmed and maybe some procedural thing will make that a reality.

However, it looks like she will eventually be confirmed. I hope it is not until well after the carcass of her career has been picked clean.

Anyone want to bet that the Democrats will treat Ricci with hostility?

As an aside, I find it interesting reading all the liberals who want her confirmed. They complain about Republicans smearing her and that she should just be voted on and sent to the Court. It is funny that they don’t feel this way when a Republican nominee is on the hot seat. Then it is smear, smear, smear. Bork, Thomas, Alito and Roberts were all treated badly by the libs. We owe it to Sotomayor to ensure she gets the same treatment, in the interest of fairness, which is something she does not believe should apply to white firefighters.

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Tags: confirmation, personal destruction, ricci, sotomayor