The new Quinnipiac poll is out and it has Arlen Specter topping Joe Sestak 50% to 21%.
Obama held a big Hollywood fundraiser last night. Everyone knows that, but does everyone know (we refer to these in the office as Kleefeld-isms):
Fun fact: one of the celebrity attendees was actor Kiefer Sutherland, who is of course the star of the right-wing favorite TV show 24 — and is also the grandson of the late left-wing Canadian politician Tommy Douglas, considered by many to have been the father of universal health care in his country.
That and the day’s other political news in Eric Kleefeld’s TPMDC Morning Roundup.
To take the public conversation on its face, a key dynamic in the Sotomayor story is that Republicans can’t easily level what would otherwise be legitimate criticisms because some will see them as evidence of prejudice or hostility toward a Latina woman. In other words, the GOP is hamstrung on this battle and has to fight it with one rhetorical arm tied behind its back.
In theory, that could be a problem. But a couple days in, it’s actually playing really differently. While elected Republicans are keeping their powder mainly dry and avoiding — in all but a few cases — racial charged remarks. But you can’t say that for professional Republicans. We’ve heard that her taste for ‘ethnic’ food might throw into question her judicial reasoning, that she’s a product of affirmative action, that she’s a racist, that she’s challenging English language dominance by insisting on an alien Spanish pronunciation of her name, that she belongs to a scary group called ‘la raza’ that might want to help Mexico reconquer the southwestern United States and make it Mexican again and on and on. All told, there’s a chorus from the right that Sotomayor is a scary Mexican, understood in the sense of ‘Mexican’ as anybody with a Spanish last name who isn’t actively working to keep the Cuban embargo in place.
And to the extent that there’s political calculation at work it seems more likely that it’s the realization that any Latina nominee would bring out the rightwing crazies like moths to a flame. They simply can’t help it.
Can we all agree now that at a minimum Roland Burris wasn’t really the elder statesman of Illinois politics with a sterling character who was utterly removed from and disinterested in all the unseemly jockeying for Obama’s empty Senate seat?
Return to those thrilling days of yesteryear (2003) when any opposition to Bush appeals court nominee Miguel Estrada was derided by the GOP as nothing but racism.
We’re watching very closely for news about this afternoon’s meeting between President Obama and Palestinian Authority President Abbas at the White House. (I’m also curious why they’re holding it so late in the afternoon; but that’s another matter.) In the ether there’s also this pretty direct back and forth today between Secretary Clinton and the Netanyahu government on the settlement issue.
But what just caught my attention was this article MJ Rosenberg just flagged in today’s Yediot Ahronoth. It’s an interview with former US Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk which is very blunt about Israeli intransigence on this issue. There’s no English language version of the article but MJ has translated and flagged some key quotes.
I used to think of Indyk as on the mildly dovish but essentially mainstream, which is where I used to consider myself. But I didn’t think of him as someone who’d say stuff like this or voice a very different view of the 2000 trainwreck than is generally accepted here in the US.
Okay. Over recent days I’ve plumbed the question of whether Sonia Sotomayor would be the first or the second ‘Hispanic’ Supreme Court Justice. I’d first learned in the direction of ‘second’ — thinking that Benjamin Cardozo, a Sephardic Jew of Portuguese ancestry who served on the Court in the 1930s might have been the first. But tips and rejoinders from readers slowly led me to reconsider the matter. First is the fact that — whatever the history and etymology of the word ‘Hispanic’ — it seems clear that ‘Hispanic’ today generally refers to people from a Spanish language heritage, not people from Portugal or a Portuguese speaking country like Brazil. There are various other complications — Portuguese-American members of Congress have often joined the Hispanic Caucus, the US government seems to have given its imprimatur to the no-Portugal/Brazil formulation, some question about whether Cardozo’s ancestors may have been crypto-Spanish crypto-Jews (my own semi-analytic, semi-farcical locution) and much more. But it all leans against Cardozo’s candidacy.
But now Karl Rove is chiming in on Cardozo’s behalf in today’s Journal …
While the next two to four months of maneuverings and hearings may provide more insights into the views of Mr. Obama’s pick, barring an unforeseen development — not unheard of in Supreme Court nominations — Judge Sotomayor will become the second Hispanic (Benjamin Cardozo was Sephardic) and third woman confirmed to the Supreme Court. Democrats will win the vote, but Republicans can win the argument by making a clear case against the judicial activism she represents.
Clearly, Rove does not have as knowledgeable a readership as TPM.
Liz Cheney comments on “enhanced marriage techniques” — denies gay marriage is torture.
When we go through this ritual of Supreme Court nomination and confirmation, the brainier publications look at the interest groups and great legal questions. But there’s another part of the story — in some ways bigger in terms of the result and often more gripping to my attention– that is everywhere but too little discussed. And that is, the cast of spinmeisters and freakbots on the cable shows either smearing or carrying the water of the nominee.
And right out of the gate the chief anti-Sotomayor rabble rouser seemed to be a woman named Wendy Long. You can see her yacking it up on all the shows. You’ve probably seen her somewhere. In our ed. meeting this morning Brian Beutler raised the point that Curtis Levey — another highly visible freakbot — is not only the chief TV spinner for his group The Committee for Justice but also runs the group. And Long is only the TV yacker for her group, the Judicial Confirmation Network. And he even says that Levey’s group has more muscle. So I had to take Brian to task and explain that he shouldn’t waste my time with all those details. Wendy Long is the chief freakbot on TV. And really, what else matters?
So if you want to know a bit more about her, here’s our run-down.
We want to keep an eye on Long though. So when you see her on TV, pay attention to what she says. And she says anything particularly nuts, drop us a line. And you have any more relevant background, let us know about that too.