Dick Polman: The American Debate: Why GOP can't block Sotomayor

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The American Debate: Why GOP can't block Sotomayor

By Dick Polman

Inquirer National Political Columnist


Unless Senate Republicans manage at the eleventh hour to unearth a juicy revelation about Sonia Sotomayor - perhaps by proving that she's the biological mother of Michael Jackson's children - they're not likely to lay a glove on her during the confirmation hearings that begin tomorrow.

In fact, by midweek, the hearings may well be trumped in the news cycle by fresh stories about the still-dead status of Jackson. Sotomayor's path to the U.S. Supreme Court seems virtually assured, for a trio of reasons:

THERE'S NO SMOKING GUN. For six weeks, Republicans have looked in vain for an issue that would galvanize the public and compel red-state Senate Democrats to vote against her. The flap over her eight-year-old comment - about how a "wise Latina" jurist might make "better" decisions - basically flamed out a month ago, and a landslide majority of Americans have since told pollsters they support her.

At the hearings, Republicans will surely cite her appeals-court ruling against white New Haven, Conn., firefighters as proof of ethnic "favoritism." But that issue has gone nowhere, perhaps because of statistics the GOP has sought to ignore: As a federal appeals judge, Sotomayor has participated in roughly 90 race-related cases - and has rejected the discrimination claim 80 times.

Republicans have tried to paint her as a radical outside the mainstream, but at the hearings they'll be hard-pressed to explain away the new Senate Judiciary Committee statistics, which show that, as an appeals judge, Sotomayor has voted to uphold 92 percent of the criminal convictions that have come before her - and that she has agreed with her Republican-appointed colleagues 97 percent of the time.

Some conservative activists think she's vulnerable on guns, because in several cases she failed to endorse an unrestricted right to bear arms. But Republicans will have trouble pressing that hot button, given that Sotomayor has been endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police, which on Wednesday lauded her as "a model jurist: tough, fair-minded and mindful of the constitutional protections afforded to all U.S. citizens."

In politics, it's never easy to stop something with nothing. When the American Bar Association announces, on the eve of the hearings, that it has given Sotomayor its highest rating ("well qualified," the same ABA grade bestowed upon John Roberts and Samuel Alito), that's a wake-up call for Republicans to counter with something. They're still looking.

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