GOP Packing Up The Heavy Weapons To Fight Another Day?

It's looking like so many Republican senators are too scared to alienate women, Hispanics and, most of all, moderates, that the Party of No is abandoning its threats to make a circus out of President Obama's first Supreme Court nomination. Even KKK-affiliated Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, especially elevated to ranking Judiciary Committee member so he could lead the attack, is now saying he doesn't expect that the GOP will orchestrate a filibuster. Doesn't Jon Kyl look like a blustering sissy-boy now? And this cuts Ben Nelson off at the knees as well, since the only power this bag of hot and stinking air has is when he can insert himself into Republican jihadism.

A couple weeks back I tried to make the case that the only thing most establishment Republicans really care about in terms of the Judiciary is that judges will uphold an obscure 1886 pronouncement that seems to say that corporations have the same inalienable legal rights as people, though with none of the responsibilities. Yesterday Corey Boles of Dow Jones took this on in terms of Sonia Sotomayor's record on the bench.

A 2001 ruling by U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor kept alive a class action lawsuit against Visa Inc. (V) and Mastercard Inc. (MA), which led to a $3 billion settlement, one of the largest corporate payouts at the time.

The case is just one of several in which Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's nominee to replace Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter, has been involved in significant matters affecting corporate America.

...Also in 2001, the Second Circuit, with Sotomayor in the majority, ruled against several of the largest U.S. oil companies in a case with significant consequences for antitrust law... Yet in another instance, Sotomayor joined a majority opinion in a class action case that benefited corporations.

She seems to lean somewhat in a progressive direction but as one labor lawyer put it, she "pretty closely hews to the law, she doesn't create a new law in her decisions." She's probably going to be a dependable progressive vote but not the person that's going to start balancing out the activist wingnuts, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito, who have been pushing the Court further and further away from protecting ordinary families and towards being a steno service for corporate America.

TV talking heads are babbling about the New Haven firefighters case but corporate America is more concerned with Didden v Village of Port Chester, which worries corporatists that she is "bad for business." Libertarian kook and anti-empathy fanatic, Richard Epstein, has been one of her harshest critics and warns that "American business should shudder in its boots if Judge Sotomayor takes this attitude to the Supreme Court." What the case will say to most Americans, though, is that these cases are not black and white and not within our competence or understanding and that we have to decide if we can trust President Obama to pick the right justices or we would be better off with paid corporate shills and performing seals like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter picking our judges.

Much to the dismay of the far right, their allies at the NRA are staying neutral on this one and in this morning's Washington Post, even the penultimate Beltway hack concludes that most Republican senators will be too scared to challenge Obama on the nomination. Although he isn't thinking about the hard-core radical right-- lunatic fringe members like Jim DeMint, the 2 nutcases from Oklahoma, Jim Bunning, Pat Roberts, Richard Burr... that crew-- he thinks the Republican Senate caucus will break with Limbaugh on this one.

While most of the organizations that purport to speak for the conservative base immediately condemned Sotomayor and called on the GOP to oppose her, I think it's likely that many and perhaps most of the 40 Republicans left in the Senate will acquiesce to her appointment. Their initial comments were cautious. Before joining the general call for "a fair and thorough process" of examining the judge's credentials, retiring Republican Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida signaled to his colleagues that they had better tread carefully.

...I have to believe that many Republican senators will seize the opportunity Obama has provided and prove they are not as narrow-minded as their most extreme backers. And then hope that, like some mirror image of Souter, Sotomayor will surprise the world with some of her votes.

Update: Bad News For Our Conservative Readers

I'm sorry to have to report this and I'm especially sorry if it causes anyone any pain or sadness:

Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated. The evidence is based on 1254 community college students and 1600 foreign students seeking entry to United States' universities. At the individual level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with SAT, Vocabulary, and Analogy test scores. At the national level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with measures of education (e.g., gross enrollment at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels) and performance on mathematics and reading assessments from the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) project. They also correlate with components of the Failed States Index and several other measures of economic and political development of nations. Conservatism scores have higher correlations with economic and political measures than estimated IQ scores.

You might chose to not believe it-- I wouldn't blame you-- but if you want some proof, may I suggest you spend two minutes reading a post today from the right-wing's nutroots leaders, Erick Erickson (R-GA). Or just take Science Direct's word for it.