| Big John Cornyn is all over the place when it comes to Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Last Friday Cornyn was forced to backpedal his criticism of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich-- the real Republican party leadership.
Now the Junior Senator has to back peddle his hard-line stance on the use of the filibuster.
Rick Klein of ABC News has an interesting article on the GOP dilemma.
On ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" Sunday, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, refused to rule out the possibility of a filibuster.
"I think it's really premature to say that or to speculate," said Cornyn, a member of GOP leadership who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
But Cornyn was one of the most outspoken voices in favor of the nuclear option -- in favor, that is, of banning judicial filibusters forever.
Cornyn's convictions seems to be based in partisanship instead of policy. He opposed the use of a filibuster for Alberto Gonzales and Condoleezza Rice He went so far as to characterize them as American success stories.
"From a strictly political standpoint, Democrats are hurting themselves by attacking American success stories like Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales," Cornyn told me when I was at The Boston Globe, in February 2005. "I had hoped that they had learned something from what happened on Nov. 2."
By supporting a possible filibuster against Juge Sotomayor seems to mean Cornyn doesn't believe she is an American success story. To that point, her bio seems to speak for itself.
Judge Sotomayor is of Puerto Rican descent, and was born in the Bronx. Her father died when she was nine, and she was raised by her mother. Sotomayor graduated with an A.B., summa cum laude, from Princeton University in 1976, and received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where she was an editor at the Yale Law Journal. She was an advocate for the hiring of Latino faculty at both schools. She worked as an Assistant District Attorney in New York for five years before entering private practice in 1984. She played an active role on the boards of directors for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the State of New York Mortgage Agency, and the New York City Campaign Finance Board. Sotomayor was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H. W. Bush in 1991 and confirmed in 1992.
Cornyn's threat comes as an even bigger surprise based on what Cornyn said during the Bush administration.
Cornyn criticized Democrats for raising possibility of filibustering a Hispanic nominee. Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said Democrats appeared to be trying to attack Bush through Gonzales, and to send a message that they would oppose Gonzales's elevation to the Supreme Court. He said that Democrats are opposing a Hispanic appointee for attorney general just a week after many spoke out against Bush's nomination of a Condoleezza Rice a black woman to become secretary of state. "From a strictly political standpoint, Democrats are hurting themselves by attacking American success stories like Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales," said Cornyn, who serves on the Judiciary Committee. "I had hoped that they had learned something from what happened on Nov. 2," he added, referring to the election, when Republicans picked up four Senate seats, including that of then-Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. [Boston Globe, 2/5/05]
Cornyn spokesperson says Democrats are tone deaf for opposing a Hispanic nominee. Republicans say Democrats are "tone deaf" on the level of support for this nominee in the Hispanic community. Opposing the Gonzales nomination "is an exit strategy for the Democrats in '06," says Don Stewart, a spokesman for Sen. John Cornyn (R) of Texas. Despite opposition, Democrats say they are not planning to filibuster this nomination. [Christian Science Monitor, 2/1/05]
In the background of John Cornyn's threat to leave a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court vacant, Norm Coleman and the NRSC challenged to Al Franken's victory in Minnesota keeps the Senate one Senator shy of making Cornyn and his threat irrelevant. Perhaps that is why they are spending so much time and money to prevent the people of Minnesota from having two senators in Washington.
Regardless, as Klein points out, all of Cornyn's posturing is mostly irrelevant.
Still, should some Republicans choose to filibuster Sotomayor, it will almost certainly fail. Democrats are one court ruling away from getting a 60th Senate seat -- the threshold needed to overcome any filibuster in the Senate.
The only tactic left to make the NRSC or the national Republican Party relevant is hypocrisy and hate.
For more, read Charles Kuffner's post. |
