Sotomayor made "wise woman" comment in 1994; only 19% support her New Haven firefighter decision; Gingrich gets smarter

In 2001, Sonia Sotomayor made her now-infamous "wise Latina" speech, and since then Barack Obama and Robert Gibbs have tried to walk her back from it, despite the fact that at no time between when she said it and now did she issue any sort of backtrack. Not only that, but back in 1994 she said something highly similar (link); one of the few differences is that she didn't mention her ethnicity, only her gender:

Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that “a wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion in dueling cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes the line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, if Prof. Martha Minnow is correct, there can never be a universal definition of ‘wise.’ Second, I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experience would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion.

The defense raised by some that apparently that statement was reviewed for her appeals court nomination and found acceptable doesn't particularly wash due to the fact that she's been nominated to the US Supreme Court and due to the fact that what she later said was even worse.

Also, Newt Gingrich backs off calling her a "racist", something that was a pretty stupid thing to do but something that's in line with how GOP leaders generally operate (link). He appears to make some good points, but he also doesn't mention her membership in the PRLDEF and the National Council of La Raza.

And, per a Quinnipiac University poll (link):

American voters say 55 - 36 percent that affirmative action should be abolished, and disagree 71 - 19 percent with Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's ruling in the New Haven firefighters' case, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today... More than 70 percent of voters say diversity is not a good enough reason to give minorities preferential treatment in competition for government or private sector jobs...

Rather than being stupid and calling her names which aren't really supported by the evidence and which will always remain disputed, the better choice for Obama's opponents is to point out just how deeply steeped in far-left concepts Sotomayor is: affirmative action, identity politics, and ethnic nationalism. Even if she makes it to the court, they can help us have a debate about those concepts as well as the far-left racial power groups which she joined.