What Matt said…

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Remember back in February when newly elected RNC Chairman Michael Steele planned an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings”? Steele: GOP needs 'hip-hop' makeover “We need messengers to really capture that region – young, Hispanic, black, a cross section … We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-surburban hip-hop settings.”

Apparently Senate Republicans never got the memo. The confirmation hearing for Judge Sonia Sotomayor has demonstrated that "the Republican Party will persist in tying its fortunes to an anachronistic claim of white male exceptionalism and privilege," as Eugene Robinson wrote in his opinion today:

Republicans' outrage, both real and feigned, at Sotomayor's musings about how her identity as a "wise Latina" might affect her judicial decisions is based on a flawed assumption: that whiteness and maleness are not themselves facets of a distinct identity. Being white and male is seen instead as a neutral condition, the natural order of things. Any "identity" — black, brown, female, gay, whatever — has to be judged against this supposedly "objective" standard.

* * *

The whole point of Sotomayor's much-maligned "wise Latina" speech was that everyone has a unique personal history — and that this history has to be acknowledged before it can be overcome. Denying the fact of identity makes us vulnerable to its most pernicious effects. This seems self-evident. I don't see how a political party that refuses to accept this basic principle of diversity can hope to prosper, given that soon there will be no racial or ethnic majority in this country.

"[I]f the Republican Party is going to be competitive, it can't be seen as the party of white male grievance."

So it is simply surreal at this moment in history that the face of the Republican Party on the Senate Judiciary Committee is ranking minority member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), a throwback Southern white cracker. Sen. Sessions epitomizes "white male exceptionalism and privilege" and "white male grievance."

Jeff Sessions whose own nomination for a federal judgeship could not make it out of the Republican-run Judiciary Committee in 1986 after testimony that he had called the NAACP un-American and communist-inspired, had joked that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was OK until he found out members of the Klan smoked pot, and that he agreed with another lawyer who said a Department of Justice attorney, who was white, was a disgrace to his race because he represented African-Americans.

And those are the things that he admitted to saying and tried to defend. The charges he denied included the allegation that he told a black attorney he should, quote, “Be careful about how he talked to white folks,” and that he called a black attorney “boy.” 'The Rachel Maddow Show' for Monday, July 13

Now Jeff Sessions is leading the charge against Sonia Sotomayor on the grounds that she has a prejudice problem? GOP central casting really blew this one.

Judge Sotomayor has demonstrated exceptional restraint and temperament in responding to the race-baiting and sexist attacks from Republicans on the committee, like Sen. Sessions. I dont' suffer such fools. I would have thrown down and pounded his cracker ass.

Matthew Iglesias provides the Thought of the Day:

I would pay good money to hear Sonia Sotomayor say, “Senator Sessions, I think it’s ironic to be facing these questions from a man whose judicial nomination was rejected by this very committee on the grounds that he’s a huge racist.”