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Cornyn: Dems "Ought To Be Ashamed" For Using Race In Sotomayor Debates
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) has accused the Democrats of using race as a wedge issue in the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation process -- that is, the Dems have been "giving cover to groups and individuals to nurture racial grievances for political advantage."
Cornyn was responding to statements from Harry Reid and other Democrats, that the GOP's opposition to Sotomayor will hurt them among Latino voters.
"I don't think it influences people's votes, but what it does encourage is a very poisonous -- indeed a very toxic -- tone of destructive politics," said Cornyn. "They ought to be ashamed of themselves."
Of course, this accusation can certainly cut both ways. Remember how the right wing celebrated the New Haven firefighters case?
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Josh
Matt
Eric
Brian
Can we just get it over with and classify Republicans as ballistic weapons? Because they certainly do a lot of projecting these days.
(Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all night)
July 30, 2009 10:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Whip the tasteless...I mean tip the waitress!
July 30, 2009 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Accepting the "shame" is like a badge of courage from these assholes!
July 30, 2009 10:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
What firefighters?
/5 second rule
July 30, 2009 10:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is there anything that Reeps say that isn't utterly hypocritical?
July 30, 2009 10:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, the Glenn Beck strategy of projection. (or preemption -- didn't Rove use this, too?)
Ain't it funny. The GOP, famed for their Southern Strategy and perenial race-baiting, are blaming the Dems for using race.
And the first black president is the "racist".
Those racist minorities!!
July 30, 2009 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
In other news, the R's blasted the late President John F. Kennedy, "for being involved in the Kennedy Assassination".
July 30, 2009 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
The sad part is that he's not even being consciously cynical. To his mind, and to most modern Republicans' minds, "American" = "white" and "normal" = "white and male." It's just that simple. If you run their facially hypocritical or ironic comments through that filter, they make sense.
It's not even a belief, because a belief would be something that they'd been specifically taught and had actually, in some fashion, thought about. Instead, its a basic assumption that they absorbed through osmosis as they grow up and which they cannot change without a wrenching fundemental reassessment of their entire worldview. It is an assumption that has its intellectual roots embedded in the growing acrimony of the 1840s and 50s: America is a white man's country, created by white men, for white men. The "all men" referenced in the Declaration of Independence and the "people" of the United States who formed a more perfect union were and are white men, and all others have no rights that the law and society need acknowledge or respect.
It's a view most clearly enunciated by Roger Taney in his opinion in the Dred Scott case, by Stephen Douglas during the Lincoln-Douglas debates and you'll see it throughout the founding documents and speeches of the Confederacy.
And it's not just a Confederate idea. It was an idea central of the ideology of the Know-Nothing Party which was absorbed into the Republican Party at its founding. The Know Nothings are the original seed of craziness planted in the Republican Party at its founding that has never stopped bearing tainted fruit.
July 30, 2009 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Seriously, your comments are a pleasure to read.
July 30, 2009 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you. High praise indeed, coming from you.
July 30, 2009 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
co-effing sign. NCSteve...who is that masked man.
July 30, 2009 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not sure its so much white skin as white culture. They're glad to accept people like Michael Steele as long as he adheres their cultural norms. This is why when Steele talks about hip-hop he sounds like Pat Boone. He IS Pat Boone - in black face.
In the pre-Civil War period, the acceptable culture was Protestant Anglo-Saxon. Catholics and many other white ethnic groups were viewed with deep suspicion, which led to the nativists from which the Know-Nothings sprang. They've broadened somewhat over 150 years, but much less than the cultural broadening that has occurred in the country as a whole, so in comparison, they're probably even narrower than they were then. The deep-seated nativism is still readily apparent.
But your central point is correct. They simply don't see it because they view everything from their narrow cultural frame of reference.
July 30, 2009 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Race is the game they play, class is the belief system. I do not think he upper echelon of the GOP is very race oriented. Seriously. Michael Steele, Colin Powell, Alberto Gonzalez, Condoleeza Rice, and etc. If you have the entrance fees for the Congressional/national GOP, anyone can join these days. All it takes are millions of dollars along with the willingness and ability to fabricate irrational perspectives. The GOP requires loyalty to the party and an unwavering loyalty to the wealthiest among us. Actually, I doubt I have ever rubbed elbows with the wealthy they represent. At any rate, they play the race card in many ways, this being just another example, to move the masses, but really, it comes down to money, just follow the money.
July 30, 2009 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's part of what I meant by "white" = "normal." As long as a brown-skinned person is willing to talk and act like he's fully assimilated into that most narrowly Anglo-Saxon branch of white culture that's most resistant to cross-assimilation of cultural attributes of other ethnic groups, they'll accept them as being fully and truly "American."
However, skin color does play a role. That same requirement of fully assimilated WASPishness as a condition of being deemed "American" is not imposed on whites of other than Anglo-Saxon ethnicity, as long as their ethnic group adheres to some form of Christianity they don't have a foreign accent. Italian Americans, Eastern Europeans, even members groups which are unusually resistant to full assimilation like Greek-Americans, don't have to pass the WASP test to be deemed "American."
July 30, 2009 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, I think that's probably more a reaction to the siege mentality they're in. It wasn't so long ago that Italians wouldn't have been welcome, nor the Irish. We're just too damn Catholic for the protestant values cooked into the WASP mindset. Papist scum beholden Rome, and all. It wasn't so long ago that 'he'll serve the Pope, not the Country' was whispered about a Presidential candidate, you know.
But as their 'enemies' have multiplied, they've been forced to hold their noses and co-opt the least objectionable to their own side as best they can. They are very good at 'us against them' and redefining 'us' when they start to feel like they don't have sufficient cannon fodder.
July 30, 2009 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey now... Pat Boone released a metal album. I don't think Steele would ever do that.
July 30, 2009 1:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not to mention his rendition of "Tutti Frutti" that was released because the Establishment needed something to counter Little Richard. If you haven't seen it, I'm sure you can find it on YouTube. It's hilarious.
July 30, 2009 2:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was just talking to my neighbor; she moved here to Arkansas from California. She cannot understand why 75% of the people in the central Ozarks are so mired in the 50's racial attitudes. I sent her a copy of your post to help explain.
July 30, 2009 11:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Steve, I very much agree with lars, and I think you are onto something when you address the way these modern conservative Republicans think. Here's my current hypothesis of how they are thinking. It is a pattern of thinking that is fragmented and does not require overall consistency. In fact it may actively reject being fully consistent.
They have a socially created universe that determines what they believe is true and what is false. They also have a system of automatically demonizing any challenge to that socially created worldview and ideology. That's the nature of the conservative culture.
They seem to set up socially-created categories that are mentally independent of each other and then try to make everything within a category fit their ideology of how that social world should work. Part of that process is to ignore the things that would make it NOT work. They'd probably justifiy that by belief that a person succeeds through positive thinking and that consideration of negative things and reasons why the program won't work will defeat the purpposes of the program they want to succeed.
In this case the category of thinking might be something that surrounds the concepts surrounding the ideas that include "American" = "white" and "normal" = "white and male." The ideology behind that - that is the world view or culture that all of them accept without question - is that those things are unquestionably true. They also agree that anything that questions or threatens those accepted "Truths" has to be false on its face and must be rejected. If some kind of method of thinking (rationality) alleges to prove the falseness of what at a gut level they know to be true, then that so-called rationality gives an obviously false result, so rationality itself must be false. This is what I think is the thinking behind the anti-science attacks by the global-warming deniers and the anti-Darwinism by the Discovery Institute.
Steve, you are describing the history in American politics of this form of thinking quite well. I think the social psychology and sociology of conservative thought is important also. I think that the frequent refrain we see of the question "What universe is he or she living in?" is very accurate.
We each live in a socially created reality, and I believe that the social reality inhabited by the conservatives is very foreign to and inimical to what I think is the core of Constitution-based America under the Rule of Law. Recognizing and understanding the history of that inimical form of thinking in American politics is very important.
July 30, 2009 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good thoughts all. One aspect I would add is that although hysteria, paranoia and seige rhetoric have always been integral to that worldview, the truth is that until recently, for all the defensive rhetoric, they've usually been on the offensive. The recent trend toward evermore apocalyptic and irrational rhetoric (as exemplified by Michelle Bachmann and Glenn Beck) is directly attributable to the fact that, now, their world view is, in fact, under seige. It is no longer viable demographically and continued attempts to implement it as policy result in dysfunctional government which further erodes their legitimacy. Acknowledging that, however, would mean cognitive disintegration, so they really do feel like they're at war.
In a way, they're kind of like feral housecats: pitiful yet destructive and dangerous.
July 30, 2009 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now now, that's not fair...
I've had generations of feral housecats growing up in my back yard. They aren't nearly this destructive, and what's more, they find someplace out of the way to shit, instead of the nonsense these guys do.
They're more like brain-damaged spider monkeys.
July 30, 2009 1:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you haven't read George Lakoff, I highly recommend him. His thesis is more or less the same. People have their own frame of reference and anything that doesn't fit in that frame of reference is viewed as aberrant or may even become invisible to them.
July 30, 2009 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pure unadulterated Rove.
July 30, 2009 10:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
If people on both sides of the isle got on with the business of running the country and stopped with the silly ass racial comments, we would all be better off.
Vote the Bums Out!
July 30, 2009 10:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, right. It's totally a bipartisan problem.
July 30, 2009 10:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I meant what I said. As for my politics, I am gay and Black and male. So my politics tend to be liberal...BUT my economics tend to be conservative.
This small example should show you that we liberals can be just as closed minded as those conservatives. It's helpful to understand your opposition not just call them racist or stupid. Goodness knows I got my jollies calling Pres. Bush every name in the book, see how much good that did.
I say again, if both sides of the aisle would get off their asses, we would all be better off.
July 30, 2009 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
But I understand the opposition to be both Overtly Racist and Willfully Stupid.
If it walks like a stupid racist, and talks like a stupid racist than it must be a Republican.
It is both wrong and unwise to NOT call them out for this.
If your ethnicity and sexual orientation are as you say, it is you that will be more affected by the unquestioned rhetoric spouted by these pieces of Sh*t.
If we don't call them out, our children will see this rhetoric as an acceptable view point. Again, that only offends me. For you, it could have an affect on you safety.
July 30, 2009 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are right Johnny_5. I can't argue an indefensible position.
I do wish we would not lose sight of our goals here. Thus far, this has only served as a distraction.
My concern is that we will get off track and not pursure health care or Social Security...hell you know the list of problems as much as I do.
July 30, 2009 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
It would be nice if it wasn't solely up to Dems to refute the racism and blatent lies told on a daily basis by the repubs.
There was a time that the MSM din't have a problem w/ calling these things out. That day has long since past.
As we learned in 2004 W/ the swift boaters you can just let these things go unchallenged so we have to find the bandwidth to both refute the distrations as well as, to your point, not be distracted by them.
July 30, 2009 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
when you see your team collapsing, all you can do is try to incite the crowd to run onto the field so the game will be called a "no-contest"...
Nice try.
July 30, 2009 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I meant what I said. As for my politics, I am gay and Black and male. So my politics tend to be liberal...BUT my economics tend to be conservative.
I say again, if both sides of the aisle would get off their asses, we would all be better off.
July 30, 2009 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
What "silly-ass racial comments" are the Dems making currently?
July 30, 2009 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Look, we are falling for the oldest political trick in the book.
If we keep talking about this, we aren't talking about health care, 2 wars, a trillion dollars in debt...I didn't even mention home forclosures.
We have to stop falling for this. Republicans are racist...I get it. Michael Steele is an Uncle Tom. I get that too. But right now; we are in a world of hurt as a nation. We've got more important problems.
July 30, 2009 12:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's just a comment thread. We can call Cornyn a ignorant jerk and still work on substantive issues at the same time.
July 30, 2009 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Conservatives:
We'll be glad to stop talking about race when you do.
July 30, 2009 10:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's the old question of "Who started the War?" Did Hitler and the Germans start WW I by invading Czechoslovakia? Not really since the Czechs didn't shoot back. So it was really the Poles who started WW II by shooting at the invading German Armies.
The fact that Hitler faked the excuse for the invasion of Poland is easy to forget and ignore. The propagandists want us to just look at the conflict itself and ignore where it really came from. It's a game of misdirection. That's the game the Republicans are playing when they accuse the Democrats of Racism. It's pure propaganda.
July 30, 2009 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Same old, same old . . . If you want to know what the Repubs are doing, just see what they are accusing the Dems of doing.
July 30, 2009 10:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
But they are experts at twisting the message and turning it on the dems. I think they are very adept at getting their message out whereas the dems don't.
It is laughable but there are lots of folks who will believe him.
July 30, 2009 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's really hard for people who work hard to live in the reality-based community to switch gears and live the life of a propagandist. It's a totally foreign way of thinking.
For the reality-based community the work is to discover and adapt to reality. For the propagandist the work is more complicated. They have to create a false reality, live in it as though it were real, and at the same time prevent reality from intruding on what they want the created world to be.
If all your training and thinking is focused on the reality-based world you probably don't even recognize the existence of that propaganda-based world. It shouldn't exist in a reality-based world, and to accuse someone of thinking that way is to run afoul of the "Free Speech" norms that we use to discover the nature of actual reality. The propagandists are not bound by that or other related norms. Instead they laugh at how easy we are to manipulate. They lose in the long run, but as Keynes said, in the long run we are dead.
July 30, 2009 12:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
How dare the Democratics nominate and support a non-white candidate for the bench. Totally racist.
July 30, 2009 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
As I am a voting texan, I am saving all of his comments for use during his next re-election campaign. And interestingly, all of the GOP Senators who voted against her used the word "Latina"...so who is using the "race" as a point of contention?
July 30, 2009 10:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's completely ridiculous. The reason Reid believes this vote will hurt Republicans in the 2010 and 2012 election is that Ms. Sotomayor was probably the single most qualified jurist who was under 60 years old.
She worked as a criminal prosecutor, as a corporate lawyer, as a trial judge and as an appellate judge in the very complex second circuit. She has over 16 years of judicial experience. This background will help her fairly evaluate matters that come before the Supreme Court. That is all a person can ask for.
Cornyn and his white-male colleagues all seem to think that because Obama appointed her, she is unfit. So, Reid is right to criticize Cornyn and many of the others who opposed her.
July 30, 2009 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just look how much More qualified she is than Alito and Roberts were and how many fewer votes she'll get from the party that did not nominate her.
There are 3 possible reasons.
1. Race. (how many times did Repubs bring up "latina" and poor oppressed "White Firefighters"?)
2. Repubs are so petty they can't vote for a Dem Pick
3. Both
My bets on 3.
My apologies to the fine senators from Maine
July 30, 2009 12:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
...And as for the fine Senators from Maine.
Despite the Fine jobs you are doing, that "R" adjacent to your name is getting to be quite a burden to carry.
Making a party switch based on disgust w/ your party would not be ridiculed the way Spector's and Lieberman's were. Their's were based on political survival yours would be for Principle.
Pehaps you could even call yourselves "Blue-Dogs"
July 30, 2009 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
White people of America ARISE, we have nothing to lose but the chains of Obama Racist Socialism
oooh...my bad
Thought I was on Yahoo Buzz where I saw this response to "WATCH Ex-GOP Rep. (Tom Davis) Warns Republicans: "We've Become A Rural And Southern Party"
July 30, 2009 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dallas Morning News: Senator Cornyn kicks constituent in ass.
Houston Chronicle: Senator Cornyn accuses Democrats of kicking constituents in ass.
July 30, 2009 10:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
At one fell swoop, Sen. Cornyn's keen insight has renewed Latino trust in the Republican party, NOT!
July 30, 2009 10:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excuse me while i laugh...LMAO
July 30, 2009 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
John Cornyn is just an ignorant redneck in a suit. We've known that for years.
I fully appreciate his contribution to the further marginalization of the Republican Party as the home of backwards white Southerners who, happily, are an increasingly small minority in this country.
July 30, 2009 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Probably sending signals, alkie style.
July 30, 2009 11:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds like someone is pissed he didn't make it into Jon Stewart's right-wing crazy contest. "I can out-crazy Lou Dobbs! Why, I'll make Sean Hannity look like Noam freakin' Chomsky!"
July 30, 2009 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Way to solidify the Hispanic vote, sir.
Also, spoken like a just re-elected Senator.
July 30, 2009 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe he meant China.
July 30, 2009 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sen John Connin or Sen John Cornball?
supremely cynical orrrrrr juvenile spitwadder?
pandering to bible thumpin' skinheads orrrr 'my river's in denial'
Senatorial hair and a southern accent doesn't
get you nearly the same amount of respect as it use to
July 30, 2009 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Cornyn is opposing Sotomayor solely because she is a Latina woman, but it is grossly unfair for his political opponents to point this out.
July 30, 2009 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Cornyn is still and will always be an idiot.
July 30, 2009 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Accuse others of doing what you do. Hey, it worked for Rove for awhile.
Anyway, it's all about playing to the Base.
July 30, 2009 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who are worse, South Carolina Republicans or Texas Republlicans?
July 30, 2009 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know...
Who was worse, Hitler or Stalin?
July 30, 2009 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nothing is worse than a Texas Republican.
July 30, 2009 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Those Democrats got some 'splainin to do!
July 30, 2009 12:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know it just hit me like a meteor, change has polar opposite meaning to the GOP and the Democratic majority.
July 30, 2009 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, hey, HEY!!!!
Stop giving this jerk and Karl Rove chops for following the political teachings of the one and only.
Let's all give credit where it's due.
The spirit of Lee Atwater is up and talkng in the form of some douche bag, wanna-be from Texas.
There is a special place in Hell for Ole' Lee. As a matter of fact he's taken over as gate keeper down there.
July 30, 2009 12:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
This statemnet is along the same lines as the "as far as I know" statements surrounding the Birthers. Their Racist/ right-wing base is important to their electoral survival. (regionally at least)
This statement is a "Wink-and-a-Nod" to their base to keep up the racists rhetoric because its good for moral.
July 30, 2009 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cornyn is a perpetual laughingstock. It is ever remarkable that other ninnies line up behind him and his lofty thoughts.
July 30, 2009 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reid is right. The way the GOP treated her during the hearings was a disgrace. I'd like to know what universe Cornyn and the other members of the GOP live in that think the way they treated her and voted will not hurt them with the Hispanic vote.
July 30, 2009 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Because it is way nicer than they treat Hispanics in general.
July 30, 2009 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
If there is indeed a divine progidence lookinh over the USA, a time will come, sooner rather than later, when the democrats will stop listening to the repunants; the American people will ignore the ten percent who demean all our citizenship; the media will stop making heroes of that ten percent; and democratic leaders will run roughshod over the repunant minority. Once you are given power, either use it or loose it. I fear Obama has lost the power - the opposition nor his own party does not fear him. OK! congressional leadership - take the lead. But quickly. You've already lost the Health Care initiative. What in heaven's name are you worrying about. Strike! Now!
July 30, 2009 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
others above have already clarified this, but it's actually not about race--because Sotomayor is white/caucasion. But she's not the "right" kind of white. It's about anglo saxon white culture vs. spanish white culture. The first being the "norm" in the eyes of most Republicans.
It constantly bothers me to see the word "hispanic" used to identify someone as a racial minority.
I don't know if it was here, but someone recently wrote that if we were in any other country, Sotomayor would just be a white woman who speaks spanish.
July 30, 2009 2:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
"At the Texas Secessionist Meetin' last night, Rick Perry and I were shakin' our heads at how racist y'all are. Then at the Klan conference, we talked about the shameful racism of the Democratic party."
July 30, 2009 2:04 PM | Reply | Permalink