Most observers thought the confirmation hearings for Sonis Sotomayor were rather boring except Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman who accused Republicans of playing the race card.

From the Politico

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy accused Republicans Sunday of playing the race card on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

“You have one leader of the Republican Party call her the equivalent of the head of the Ku Klux Klan. Another leader of the Republican Party called her a bigot,” the Vermont Democrat said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “The leadership of the Republican Party came out against her long before we had the hearings, long before they looked at her record. I think that’s unfair.”

“I hope we don’t go back to the day when we used to have African-Americans up for confirmation and say yes, but you belong to the NAACP so we’re really suspicious of you,” said Leahy. “Come on, stop the racial politics. …”

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, tried to jump in, saying, “Come on, Pat, I want to disagree …” but Leahy continued:

“That’s what comes across. It comes across that if you belong to a group that tries to help Hispanics, … somehow you’re suspicious. The same arguments were used against Thurgood Marshall, and I think it’s wrong.”

Former Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo has criticized Sotomayor for her membership in the National Council of La Raza, which he called “a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses.”

Other Republicans have teed off on Sotomayor’s now-infamous “wise Latina” remark.

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has called Sotomayor a “bigot and a racist,” and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called her a “racist” — although Gingrich later took back his remark and acknowledged last week that the judge came off as “dramatically more moderate” in her confirmation hearings.

Sessions defended his party as simply conducting a vigorous investigation of Sotomayor’s background.

“No Republican leader said she was a bigot,” said Sessions. “There’s nothing wrong with us asking about her personal views about legal positions that she took as a member of any organization. That’s a normal thing to do.”

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About the author

Don Irvine
Don Irvine is Chairman of Accuracy in Media. He is active on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow him @donirvine to read his latest thoughts.

4 Comments for Leahy Says GOP Used Race Card on Sotomayor

Stephanie Davis

Earth to Patrick (Leaky) Leahy:
The Democrat Party has a long and disgraceful history regarding race in this country. It’s the party of slavery, segregation, the Black Codes, lynching, Jim Crow, water hoses and attack dogs (Bull Connor), Orville Faubus, George Wallace, Robert Byrd, inferior schools (government schools), and anti-family public policy (welfare). Senator Leahy and his party are on notice: stop using racial language to deflect criticism of its increasingly anti-American policy stances. Racism is an integral legacy of the Democrat Party.

Will Gerard

Leahy, with his surgically enhanced smile looks like the Joker and smells like Death.

As for the racism bit, it’s a bit like projection. They chose her for her sex and her race and accuse anyone opposed as bigots and misogynists.

loco36

It is never racism when the targets of democrats are republican minorities. Consider how Condoleeza Rice, Judge Thomas,
Eric Estrada and numerous others were treated horribly by Lheahy and other democrats like him.

TK

The right certainly played “the race card” – - but Sotomayor’s six or seven speeches where SHE babbled about “the latina and the white men” most definitely created the opportunity for the rightwingers to play it.

(Note: I’m a traditionalist and an Independent moderate – and her speeches and the Ricci decision raised the issue of her possible bias and/or prejudice with me, too!  I might have pushed her on the issue more than the rightwingers did!)