GOP Senators Judicious About Their Future

After a week of hearings and a fortnight of soul-searching, Republican Judiciary Committee members will vote today against confirming Sonia Sotomayor to protect the Supreme Court from activist judges--and save their own hides from the vengeance of The Base when they face reelection.

With the possible exception of Lindsey Graham, who is teetering toward approval, the minority is expressing no doubts about Judge Sotomayor's qualifications but terror over her possible excess of empathy.

Joining the parade of naysayers yesterday, Chuck Grassley explained that the nominee would not assuage a Souter-like feeling in "the pit of my stomach": "I was not convinced that Judge Sotomayor understands the rights given to Americans under the Constitution, or that she will refrain from expanding or restricting those rights based on her personal preferences."

Translation: Grassley's intestinal barometer tells him that voting no is much safer than having to explain approval of an Obama nominee with iffy demographics and temperament.

Yesterday ranking minority member Jeff Sessions wrote in an USA Today OpEd: "I don’t believe that Judge Sotomayor has the deep-rooted convictions necessary to resist the siren call of judicial activism. She has evoked its mantra too often.”

After the siren calls, mantras and stomach pains have subsided, Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed by the full Senate with only a handful of Republican votes in what used to be a relatively nonpartisan process.

Empathy Police, Keystone Kops

Charges of racism against Sonia Sotomayor are being reduced to exceeding the speed limit for empathy as Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions instructs former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia on the finer points of demographic discrimination.

In the scramble to discredit the President's Supreme Court nominee, what remains of the Republican Party is being decimated even more by open conflict between elected officials and "mouths" such as Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh.

After the former Speaker walked back his twittering about racism, Sessions voiced approval of the retraction to focus on the issue of empathy:

“I firmly believe that many judges on the Supreme Court feel too empowered to impose their personal views while they interpret statutes or constitutions and that’s where we ought to focus the debate. Will she be restrained? Will she simply follow the law and be a neutral umpire or will she be a judge that’s not committed to faithful interpretation of the law, will not subordinate herself to the law?"

This line of attack, a view of robotic judges hewing to the letter of the law and ignoring its impact on human beings, comes with ill grace from those with a heritage of using it to maintain a "separate but equal" society in the South for almost a century--an America where today's president would not have been allowed to vote and where the mixed marriage of his parents was criminal under a "faithful interpretation of the law."

In trying to make "empathy" a dirty word, Republicans may want to look at Dick Cheney, the Radical Right's hero, who is diverging from the party line on gay marriage, presumably because he has some of that undesirable feeling for his own daughter.

If GOP Senators want to vote against Judge Sotomayor's confirmation, they will have to come up with a better rationalization than that.