Conservatives claim Sonia Sotomayor is Harriet Miers. Oh please.

When President Obama nominated federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Republicans held their fire.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a temperate statement with some boilerplate language promising a deliberative vetting of the nomination. "We will thoroughly examine her record to ensure she understands that the role of a jurist in our democracy is to apply the law evenhandedly," he said.

Ditto Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who pledged that Republicans would "reserve judgment on Sonia Sotomayor until there has been a thorough and thoughtful examination of her legal views."

But if national spokesmen for the Grand Old Party were circumspect, the conservative punditry felt no such restrictions.

And in what can only be called the height of hypocrisy, many of them questioned Sotomayor's intellectual heft -- comparing her to George W. Bush's doomed and ultimately withdrawn nomination of former White House counsel Harriet Miers.

“I’m not really certain how intellectually strong she would be. She has not been very strong on the second circuit,” Karl Rove said of Sotomayor on Fox News. Karl Rove, the very same man who endorsed the Miers pick as a clever end-run against liberals eager for another woman on the court!

Then there's Curt Levey, executive director of the right-wing Committee for Justice, who said that, like Miers, Sotomayor was picked because she was a woman. "This is someone who clearly was picked because she’s a woman and Hispanic, not because she was the best qualified," he said on local radio WTOP. "I could certainly see red and purple state Democrats gawking at it and she may very well have to withdraw her nomination."

The drumbeat continued all day. At the National Review, Ramesh Ponnuru called Sotomayor “Obama’s Harriet Miers.” On Fox News, Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes, quoting the New Republic's legal beagle analyst Jeffrey Rosen, said Sotomayor was “not the smartest.”

Sotomayor's decisions -- said to number over 400 -- will be well-honed for any miscue the opposition can use to skewer her nomination. But charging her with intellectual weakness? Please. The woman graduated second in her class at Princeton and edited the Yale Law Review.

Maybe Democrats should ask for the school transcripts of the critics.

-- Johanna Neuman

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Comments

[Jeff Fagan]

"Sotomayor's decisions -- said to number over 400 -- will be well-honed for any miscue the opposition can use to skewer her nomination. But charging her with intellectual weakness? Please. The woman graduated second in her class at Princeton and edited the Yale Law Review."

Isn't it funny how when a Democrat goes to Princeton and Yale Law School, they are brilliant people?
Bush went to Yale and then graduated from Harvard with an MBA and folks on the left have been calling him names like 'moron' and 'retarded' irrespective of his educational background.

Nice hypocrisy.
Allow me to respond: the ability to test well in academia is not evidence of intellectual strength. I've known some very stupid people who graduated at the top of their class and edited their law school's law review (One such friend attends Kent Law School in Chicago).
I also know people who barely graduated high school and are now millionaires because they started a successful business and have proven to be incredibly intelligent.

This may very well be the dumbest opinion I've ever heard!

[Ben]

Wow Jeff,

Talk about not checking your facts. Are you comparing someone who graduated 2nd in her class at Princeton with someone who graduated with a C average at Yale.

Are you comparing a Bush who admitted that he was a legacy admission to Yale and had senior government contacts write his recommendations to Harvard to a poor woman from NYC who had to apply like a normal student.

You do know why Harvard refuses to show its legacy statistics versus it's affirmative action statistics? Oh wait, of course not, you're too lazy to do research.....

As for your friend at Kent. It's a tier 2 or tier 3 law school so why don't you try again. And don't fall in the trap of equating wealth with intelligence. They're not the same.

[Ned R.]

Dunno, Jeff, I can think of a dumber one.

[xinunus]

I LOVE THE WAY THE MEDIA IS IGNORING THE FACT THAT 60% OF HER RULINGS WERE OVERTURNED BY HIGHER COURTS.

[Owl]

Let me see if I "understand" right wing pundits. A poor, hispanic woman from the Bronx makes it to Salutatorian of one of the colleges deemed (at least in the 80's) as having one of the HARDEST WORKLOADS for students. How do I know this? Because I went to Grinnell, which was deemed the SECOND HARDEST. This is a college with THOUSANDS of students. She then proceeds to Yale, where she is a top notch student, and, perhaps you didn't know this, but editorships are OFFERED to top students either by other students or admin. Then, she goes on to being a Judge that rarely has any grumblings over her rulings, never gets in a scandal, and sits on the bench for SEVENTEEN YEARS. Maybe you folks questioning Sotomayer don't understand what a "year" is. Well, once you figure that out, then you can wrap your heads around SEVENTEEN OF THEM. Now you "arm chair conservatives" have the TEMERITY (look it up) to question Sotomayer's intellectual capabilities??? Dudes, if you can't figure out why moderates are becoming democrats: look in the mirror and listen to the audio tape.

One other thing: if you get less then a B at Yale in 1970 YOU ARE THE WORST STUDENT ON EARTH. Most of the 7 sister Universities were CAUGHT IN A SCANDAL CONCERNING GRADE INFLATION. Back in the 80's, there was an 80% A GRADE FOR THE GRADUATING CLASSES OF THESE UNIVERSITIES. Only the WORST OF THE WORST received less then a B! GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT!

[Owl]

A "Gentlmen's C" is what it was called: that meant you had not attended classes, not done any homework, but your family was rich, had paid full price for tuition and was adding a wing onto the science building.

[MaryJ]

She should be automatically disqualified for belong to the racist group La Raza, same as a white person would be automatically disqualified for belonging to the KKK.

[jason ellis]

There is alot to be said about the appearance of her being being biased in her decisions. She may be a very good judge however this is 2009 and the whole notion of race is going away. Why would people want a dinosaur on the bench?

[ScottyDog]

I am not a republican and I not only oppose her to sit on the court, I am outraged that a racist bigot would be
selected for the nomination to the highest court in the land.

Can you imagine a Caucasian candidate saying: “this wise White Male will make better decisions than a Latina woman? They would be compared to the KKK and David Duke.

She not only said those things but she belongs to just about every radical Hispanic race group on the planet.It is an utter disgrace that this racist is even being considered
Leave it to the LA Times to defend racism in the name of Political Correctness.
How about appointing people according to merit instead of their skin color and ideology?