Dan

Calabrese

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June 8, 2009

Sotomayor: Idiotic ‘Racist’ Canard Obscures the Real Issues

A serious debate about the serious problems inherent in Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy would be a really good idea right about now, but it doesn’t appear we’re going to have any such thing. Instead, we’re discussing the absurd idea that she is a racist – a notion given birth by a man who makes no bones about the fact that he illustrates absurdity by being absurd.

Rush Limbaugh is brilliant at what he does, which, as he will plainly tell you, is to acquire and hold as large an audience as he can, as long as he can, so he can charge confiscatory advertising rates. He is the best broadcaster in the history of broadcasting, and what makes him so good is that he takes his own sincerely held, well-reasoned beliefs and presents them in an entertaining way.

What Rush is not is a policy formation leader, nor is he interested in or probably capable of governing. It is not his job to get a bill passed or to get a nominee confirmed – or rejected. This is not to embrace that usual criticism that Rush “doesn’t really believe what he says; he’s just an entertainer.” Of course he believes it. And he expresses himself in an intentionally provocative way because that’s how he makes his show a success. Power to him.

There is something wrong, however, with Rush’s fans thinking they can do it as well as he can do it, or worse, taking his words and thinking they are the best words to use in a serious debate about the policies and future of our nation. Rush’s old homeless updates were hilarious, and made a serious point about the phoniness of the homeless issue. But you wouldn’t attempt to win a serious policy debate on homelessness by singing a Clarence “Frogman” Henry tune during a committee hearing.

Rush knows the difference. Conservative America, do you?

Rush recently did his classic illustrating-absurdity-by-being-absurd routine in declaring Sotomayor a racist – a commentary on her now-infamous statement that she hoped she, as a “wise Latina woman,” would make better rulings than a white male. If you’ve listened to Rush very much – and I’ve listened to him for 20 years – you know what this is. Rush takes a standard that Democrats and the mainstream media would apply to any conservative and turns it around on them, applying it to one of their own.

If Samuel Alito had made an equivalent statement prior to his confirmation, would he be sitting on the Supreme Court? Of course not. Would he have been branded a racist? Absolutely.

Does Rush really think Sotomayor is a racist? I doubt it, and he doesn’t need to for his point to be valid. It worked like a charm on the radio.

But when people like Newt Gingrich and a few U.S. senators posit the same idea as part of a supposedly serious debate on a Supreme Court nominee, you have to wonder if the rest of America’s conservatives have simply shut off their brains and decided to let Rush put the words in their mouths.

My e-mail and my reader forum in the past two weeks have been flooded with comments from conservatives bemoaning the “racist Sotomayor.” They’re convinced that this is the fight to have with respect to this particular nominee.

But by choosing to go all in with the racism charge, Sotomayor’s critics are picking a fight they can’t win. You can’t demonstrate that someone is a racist based on the statement she made, and by making the debate about her “racism,” and then losing said debate, conservatives miss an opportunity to accomplish something more worthwhile.

That’s because a serious discussion of Sotomayor’s shortcomings gets lost in the hubbub. She is not a racist, but she is deeply steeped in left-wing identity politics, and thinks it’s a judge’s job to side with certain favored groups at the expense of others whenever the law provides her enough of an opening to do so.

That’s a pretty big problem. It suggests she has the makings of an atrocious Supreme Court justice. And while she’s likely to get confirmed anyway, it would be useful for conservatives to lead a discussion about this, because if the public comes to understand how the left views the role of the judiciary, the public won’t like it.

But we’re not going to have that debate. The conservative base would rather run with the Sotomayor-as-racist canard because it sounded really clever when Rush said it.

Brilliant broadcasting has little in common with serious political and policy achievement. It’s bad enough that Sotomayor is going to be confirmed. Do conservatives have to make it worse by rejecting a very valid line of attack against her and embracing an idiotic one instead?

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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