Republicans' Several Reasons to Support Sonia Sotomayor

By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

Some more reasons why Republicans should support Sotomayor:

In addition to my assertions of yesterday that Sonia Sotomayor leans conservative on abortion rights cases, the Web is filling up with information that she's conservative on other critical areas of constitutional and business law as well. Is she a conservative? Of course not. But she's shaping up to be a far cry from the type of nominee to the Supreme Court one would have expected from President Obama.

According to this post from TNR, she's fine with invading privacy, she's fine with religious displays on public property, and she has a legion of corporate supporters:

It should not be surprising that 25 Republican senators—including Ted Stevens, Rick Santorum, Jesse Helms, Bill Frist, and Bob Bennett—voted to confirm Sotomayor to the circuit court in 1998. They felt comfortable voting for a judge who actually ruled against a claim of invasion of privacy to order the release of notes that Vince Foster (he of Clinton Whitewater fame) had in his briefcase before he died. Sotomayor also struck down a New York ordinance that banned the display of a religious symbol (a menorah) in a public park. Even corporate lawyers have been lining up over the past two days to announce that she is no threat to corporate interests, having ruled in their favor on numerous occasions.

We know she's pro-labor, we know she's proud of her heritage (perhaps a bit too proud in that she inaptly said a Latina (judge) would reach a "better" decision than a white male). "Better" was not the best adjective to use there. Her choice of words gave former House Speaker Newt Gingrich the grist to call her a racist:

He was reacting to a line in a speech given by Sotomayor eight years ago where she gave her take on Sandra Day O'Connor's position that "a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases."

Sotomayor disagreed with O'Connor's conclusion stating: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

As I've blogged before, whether Republicans have good reason or not, any GOP opposition to Sotomayor will inevitably be viewed as anti-Hispanic by the Hispanic community. And that's a community they can ill afford to alienate.

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