In a sign that the Republican Party’s right wing could now be attempting to walk back the over-the-top rhetoric that has been used against Sonia Sotomayor, Newt Gingrich has put up a new post on his Web site saying he shouldn’t have called her a racist — and then proceeds to go into detail about how she’s a racist!
“The word ‘racist’ should not have been applied to Judge Sotomayor as a person,” Gingrich says, “even if her words themselves are unacceptable (a fact which both President Obama and his Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, have since admitted).”
Then he goes into all sorts of details about the “wise Latina” comment, the intricacies of the New Haven firefighters case, and other objections he has to Sotomayor. At each juncture, he borrows a line from Fox News: “You Read, You Decide.”
“The stakes are very high with this nomination,” Gingrich concludes. “Has President Obama nominated a conventionally liberal judge to a lifetime tenure on our highest court? Or a radical liberal activist who will cast aside the rule of law in favor of the narrow, divisive politics of race and gender identity?”
So he shouldn’t have called Sotomayor a racist — he’s just saying she makes her legal decisions based on race!
