Commentators and news people on several networks and on the radio are saying that critics will use a statement President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court Sonia Sotomayor made about how the court is where policy will be made.
If you do a You Tube search, you’ll find that most of the clips go a little over a half a minute — just enough to quote the sentence. But it was, in fact, part of a longer statement. Rather than rely on Rush, or Sean, or the inevitable GOP ad here is the longer version so TMV readers who are Republicans, independents and Democrats can make up their own minds.
More than two minutes gives you more to judge (positively or negatively) than a little over 30 seconds (which is what you’ll likely to hear on Sean and Rush and the inevitable GOP ad):
FOOTNOTE: As others here have noted on TMV, I fully expect a mega-partisan battle since American politics in the 21st century seems locked into a polarized course where many on each side see what the consensus is from opinion makers on their side — and then follow suit. The big if is this: IF critics fail to make a case that convinces the country’s vital center and IF the GOP opts for a filibuster and IF she is defeated, then in political terms the GOP will have almost fallen into a political trap. The Republican party is already sagging with one of the country’s fastest growing groups in terms of population and clout — Hispanic voters. And defeating Sotomayor, with her life’s narrative, could be political poison in 2010…and 2012.
UPDATE: Time’s Mark Halperin also sees a trap for the mainstream GOP.
UPDATE II: Here’s the video of Obama’s nomination announcement and Sotomayor’s comments:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.