Empathy and Identity Politics; The Dems’ Gravy Train
The Democrats really know how to play the identity politics card and it would appear that Obama does it better than any leader of the liberal party has in a long time!
No longer does it matter to liberals whether or not you are technically qualified for a position based on past job experience, intelligence, background knowledge of the constitution, etc. – nope, what matters now is that you can empathize with races, genders, religions, or any multitude of things that would otherwise be characterized as superficial traits.
Sonia Sotomayor was nominated as Obama’s first choice to replace Chief Justice Souter as a Supreme Court judge. Sonia, however, has not issued an opinion of importance in over 10 years and she has quite a reputation. One tends to lean towards the fact that the only reason she was even nominated was due to her Hispanic background and her gender. This is affirmative action at its finest, and then people wonder why those who are promoted really aren’t qualified and mistakes are made at organizations and companies… Let’s get back to the merit of a candidate rather than the color of their skin/ethnicity (quotas).
What upsets me is not the fact that this woman came from very humble beginnings, really worked her way up to become more successful than most, even with a head start, but the fact that Democrats exploit these facts and use these things about people to gain constituents and voters. This is a ploy used to win the Hispanic vote, which is becoming increasingly important when deciding future elections.
In a presentation that will likely lean heavily on style over substance, Sotomayor’s background will allow the administration to again play class warfare with their presentation of her biography. The daughter of Puerto Rican parents growing up in the South Bronx, her father was a manual laborer and her mother a nurse. Her father died when she was 9.
Sotomayor went on to attend Princeton and then Yale Law School before working as a New York assistant district attorney. Former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan worked a confirmation deal with the first President Bush to nominate Sotomayor to the Second Circuit.
In one of the biggest sources of the coming Sotomayor controversy, is her conduct in the New Haven, Connecticut firefighter case that’s now on appeal to the Supreme Court.
And I’m sure many reading this are curious to find out what the controversy of the case really was – well here is the long and short of it:
In Ricci v. DeStefano, Sotomayor sided with the City of New Haven that was alleged to have used racially discriminatory practices to deny promotions to firefighters. Sotomayor joined a per curiam opinion that went so far as to bury the white firefighters’ crucial claims of unfair treatment. Judge Jose Cabranes, a Clinton appointee, chastised her in writing for apparently missing the entire host of Constitutional issues that were before the court.
According to Judge Cabranes, Sotomayor’s opinion “contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at the core of this case” and its “perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal.”
(To judge just how bad the Ricci opinion is, even liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, wrote of his dissatisfaction with the case, stating, “Ricci is not just a legal case but a man who has been deprived of the pursuit of happiness on account of race.”
Ironically, Sotomayor’s dreadful decision in Ricci is under review at this time by the Supreme Court with an opinion expected by the end of June when David Souter, the justice Sotomayor is nominated to replace, has announced his retirement.
So the official decision is still technically pending… It would be nice to know what the outcome of that case is before nominating this person as a SCOTUS justice.
This was not the first episode of judicial extremism or liberal activism from this individual…
In another example of her radical judicial philosophy, Sotomayor stated in a 2002 speech at Berkeley that she believes it is appropriate for a judge to consider their “experiences as women and people of color,” which she believes should “affect our decisions.” In the same speech, Sotomayor went on to say, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” She restated her commitment to that unlawful judicial philosophy at a speech she gave in 2005 at Duke Law School when she reiterated that the “Court of Appeals is where policy is made.”
The Obama administration has made claims in the media that Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic on the court, which is not entirely accurate. Benjamin Cardozo, a Sephardic Jew of Hispanic ancestry, served on the Supreme Court from 1932-1937. Cardozo traced his ancestry to Portugal, yet there is a mixed bag of which government agencies consider Portugal to fall under the Hispanic umbrella. It is accurate to say Sotomayor, should she be confirmed, would be the first Hispanic woman on the court.
Heaven forbid conservatives or anyone else who questions this woman’s qualifications to really uphold the law of the land, will be labeled a bigot. This is the new campaign of the left, which is entirely ironic/humorous if it wasn’t so sad at the same time. So many of color and gender play into this nonsense and believe that the liberals are the party of the common man and that of the minority – when in history, and even to this day, they are anything but. One would think that when race, ethnicity, religion, and gender are used as a means to an end, that would be considered racist, however, the indoctrinated or brain-washed masses do not understand that. The simple fact is the party who advocates individual freedoms and liberties is the party of freedom, the party that associates and segregates by race, gender, religion, etc., is the party of oppression and “plantation” politics. Keep people down so you have voters – it’s the carrot and stick philosophy that you give a little bit to entice the voter, but then you pull it away to keep them coming back for more, never letting them get the entire carrot, because they will no longer be hungry. At that point they will want their own personal liberties and freedoms – if they ever become successful they won’t require affirmative action, welfare, or government in their lives to help them… therefore Democrats will no longer have a voting bloc.
To use an example of this SCOTUS candidate, as to what I just discussed above, we can look at one of her quotes she provided in a public forum.
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
So accustomed have we become to identity politics that it barely causes a ripple when a highly touted Supreme Court candidate, who sits on the federal Appeals Court in New York, has seriously suggested that Latina women like her make better judges than white males.
Indeed, unless Sotomayor believes that Latina women also make better judges than Latino men, and also better than African-American men and women, her basic proposition seems to be that white males (with some exceptions, she noted) are inferior to all other groups in the qualities that make for a good jurist.Any prominent white male would be instantly and properly banished from polite society as a racist and a sexist for making an analogous claim of ethnic and gender superiority or inferiority.
Imagine the reaction if someone had unearthed in 2005 a speech in which then-Judge Samuel Alito had asserted, for example: “I would hope that a white male with the richness of his traditional American values would reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn’t lived that life” — and had proceeded to speak of “inherent physiological or cultural differences.”
But the crux of the matter has more to do with the battles in which the GOP should choose. The opposition of this nomination may unfortunately cause quite a hiccup for republicans in future elections with Hispanics. I do not believe that Sotomayor should be confirmed, that’s my opinion, based on the activism portrayed in several of her decisions and speeches, as well as some off-the-cuff comments made that, by any objective reader, would be considered racist in nature – or at least holding some type of antipathy/grudge towards white males in particular. However, I’m not so sure this is one of those battles that the GOP should choose to commit to.
The liberals know how to instigate a crisis or a distraction on the other side of the aisle, meanwhile passing/creating other, and more substantive legislation and policies. Some of the items that may be more useful than arguing over Sotomayor are the upcoming decision in California regarding gay marriage, where democracy and votes no longer count and a state supreme court could trump the will of the people, cap-and-trade is still on the table, health care reform, immigration reform (which has been tabled until the fall), and Obama’s horrible foreign policy experience, as evidenced in the recent North Korea nuke tests. Obama leans on the United Nations and the rest of the world, because he does not have a backbone of his own to condemn another nation or stand up to it as, for example, Reagan did. The philosophy of the liberals is “look over there, not over here.”
Sotomayor is an intelligent woman, but she is a radical who does not believe in the constitution. She would not be on my shortlist of judicial picks, but this appointment will not be much different than the justice she would be replacing; Souter. The next SCOTUS pick will most likely tend to be more critical than this one…
