Republicans Mark McKinnon, Matthew Dowd sell GOP opposition to Sotomayor as anti-Hispanic

As previously discussed, the New York Times and others are trying to pretend that opposition to Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the US Supreme Court is anti-Hispanic. And, Adam Nagourney of the NYT is getting help from two Republicans. Nagorney's "Republicans Weigh Risks of a Supreme Court Battle" (link) includes former George W Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger pollster/strategist Matthew Dowd and former GWB and John McCain advisor Mark McKinnon saying exactly what the NYT wants them to say. Both of them have internalized far-left Gramscian concepts and have no intellectual capability to oppose identity politics, ethnic nationalism, or affirmative action. In fact, their comments are a form of affirmative action: because of her race, she should be given a pass. Their ideas don't even make good politics: effectively opposing affirmative action - including discrediting the Democrats over that and related issues - would be a far more popular strategy than giving in to the Democratic Party's support for Balkanization and the "good" kind of racism.

From the article:

If Republicans make a big deal of opposing Sotomayor, we will be hurling ourselves off a cliff,” said Mark McKinnon, a senior adviser to Mr. Bush and a long-time advocate of expanding the party’s appeal. “Death will not be assured. But major injury will be.”

...[Dowd] said that given the steady increase in the number of Hispanic voters, he now believed Republicans needed to win a minimum of 40 percent to be competitive with Democrats... As a result, he said, barring any revelation about Ms. Sotomayor’s background, Republicans could doom themselves to long-term minority status if they are perceived as preventing Ms. Sotomayor from becoming a judge...

"Because you’ll have a bunch of white males who lead the Judiciary Committee leading the charge taking on an Hispanic women and everybody from this day forward is going to know she’s totally qualified... It’s a bad visual. It’s bad symbolism for the Republicans... Republicans have to tread very lightly... They can’t look they are going after her in any kind of personal or mean way. There’s no way they can even threaten a filibuster; I think a threat of that sort would be a problem, even if they didn’t do it

The article also quotes Rev. Luis Cortes Jr., former president of Esperanza USA:

"As a conservative, it could be worse... And as Latino, it can’t be better."

Tue, 05/26/2009 - 14:45 · · Importance: 5