Nobody should be surprised by this.
The senator who runs the GOP’s Senate campaign arm says he’ll vote against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
Texas Republican John Cornyn is siding with his party’s leaders and conservatives against President Barack Obama’s first high court nominee.
He’s opposing Sotomayor, who would be the first Latina justice, despite his state’s high concentration of Hispanic voters. Cornyn is a vivid example of GOP divisions over the 55-year-old appeals court judge, who is virtually guaranteed confirmation by early August.
There are two basic approaches for a Senator to handling a Supreme Court nominee from a President of the other party. One is to simply focus on qualifications, and approve anyone who meets a certain standard. The other is to decide based on that nominee’s views and the way he or she will likely vote once given a lifetime appointment to the bench. Under the former, Sotomayor should be confirmed unanimously; under the latter, it’d be close to the 60-40 margin the Dems have in the Senate.
I have some sympathy for Cornyn’s position – I wanted Democratic Senators to vote against Justices Roberts and Alito, whom I knew would be disasters from my perspective; certainly Justice Roberts has fulfilled my worst expectations and is by any measure far more ideological and activist than Sotomayor has been or will ever be. Cornyn wants to paint her as an extremist, which is laughable but understandable given the audience he’s playing to, which requires him to play dumb about the law, something that you’d think would be embarrassing for a onetime State Supreme Court justice to have to do, but there you have it. It’s the hand he’s been dealt, and it’s how he has to play it, regardless of what anyone else thinks. I’d feel sympathy for him, but this is very much a bed of his and his party’s own making, so he’s more than welcome to lie in it. I like the way Bill White expressed it.
Senator John Cornyn acknowledged that Sonia Sotomayor has an excellent background, the right temperament, and a record of mainstream decisions. Her life has been an inspiration. Texas’ Senator should do what is right for our state and our mainstream values. Senator Cornyn’s “no” vote on Sotomayor represents political posturing for one wing of one party, politics as usual. As our next Senator, I will do what’s right for Texas.
It’s hard to do the right thing when you’re boxed in by forces you can’t control. Stace, BOR, and In the Pink have more.
Did anyone really expect that John Cornyn would vote for her confirmation? John Cornyn has a John Wayne complex and believes defending the extra-chromosome conservative base of his party is like defending the Alamo. Forgetting what happened at the Alamo.
Nice to know Bill White is going to be our next senator. It will depend on whether Kay Bailey Hutchison runs for a fourth term. Which she most likely will. Hoping she’s “third time lucky” in her next run for governor. It’s easier to run for governor as a US Senator than it is as merely a V&E wife. Of course Bill White could challenge John Cornyn. I suspect anyone will be able to beat John Cornyn next time around simply because of the overwhelming number of Hispanics who will turn out to defeat him. One assumes by this statement that Bill White is not running for governor. Apparently he sees the writing on the wall that Kay Bailey Hutchison may or may not see.
Had the founding fathers envisioned the likes of Cornyn and Hutchison they probably would have put something in the Constitution which would have allowed states to recall their congressional members.
Unfortunately we are stuck with both of them. At least until the siege at the Alamo begins.
In ten to twenty years Texas will be a Hispanic majority state. Hear those thunder boomers in the distance, Republicans? Your days are numbered.
In ten to twenty years Texas will be a Hispanic majority state. Hear those thunder boomers in the distance, Republicans? Your days are numbered.
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What Republicans forget is that Hispanics remember the Alamo.
Those were some good links I had not seen before, Charles.
I suppose I am most surprised by Cornyn’s absence of sense-making political calculus in this choice. He has nothing really to lose by voting no — he’s coming off a convincing win over a Latino and has five more years before he stands again for re-election — and quite a bit to gain among fair-minded moderates and independents by voting aye. But then he’s never demonstrated accountability to anyone except George W Bush (I guess being a Supreme Court justice and attorney general can give a man some arrogance).
And then again, maybe those boos at the most recent Tea Party did scare him.