Democracy of the Deaf

In Washington's two debates this week, health care reform and the Sotomayor nomination, you could turn off the TV sound and miss little of substance--the D or R on the chest of the talking head will tell you that the subject is universal coverage or government control and deficits, judicial qualifications or activism.

The election of a president who prides himself on reaching across political divides has resulted in the irony of more partisanship than ever as remnants of the Republican party that rode roughshod over opposition in the Bush years are reduced to mouthing the slogans that brought them to power back then.

On health care, it's the Blue-Dog Democrats who are discussing the substance of proposals as the GOP repeats scare mantras about socialized medicine and keeps voting a straight party line in committees.

In the Sotomayor hearings, Republicans are obsessing over the Wise Latina remark and other speeches, while majority members are asking the judge about specific cases and legal principles in the course of her career on the bench.

As the Obama Administration closes in on its first six months in office, the reality of possible bipartisanship keeps receding, leaving it as only more slogan in a dialogue of the deaf.

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.