NO HISPANICS NEED APPLY :

Color War (Peter Beinart, 04.18.02, New Republic)

Whether or not Senate Democrats should be delaying [Miguel Estrada's] confirmation hearings, it has nothing to do with race. In fact, the Democrats have been explicit about their strategy regarding Bush's nominees. They're holding hearings on the moderate nominees first to encourage Bush to nominate more centrists in the future. And they're generally delaying votes on the most conservative ones. Since by all accounts Estrada is very conservative, his treatment (whether fair or not) is entirely color-blind. But that didn't stop Republican Senators Lott, Santorum, Domenici, and Orrin Hatch from calling the Democrats racist.

I assume that Peter Beinart must have some political savvy, he is after all the editor of one of the most important political journals of the Left, the estimable New Republic. But if he does understand politics you couldn't tell it from this either obtuse or dishonest column.

If by "racist" those Republican Senators meant that Democrats dislike Latinos for their race or view them as inferior then the charge would be unfair. But it is of course the case that Miguel Estrada is being treated differently because of the confluence of his conservative views with his ethnicity. The Democrats, as is well known throughout Washington, presumably even in the offices of the New Republic, are terrified of any conservative jurist who happens to be a member of what they consider their captive special interest groups : blacks, Latinos, women, etc. The reason is straightforward enough--and one suspects that had Mr. Beinart bothered to do some reporting he could have found a number of Democratic operatives who would have acknowledged it--when George W. Bush appoints folks to the Supreme Court, the Democrats want to be able to use the same contemptible tactics of personal destruction that they've perfected in the Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas and Charles Pickering nominations, but this will be made problematic if they have to smear a minority.

The Bork and Thomas nominations are instructive here. Robert Bork, despite being the best qualified nominee of his generation, was easily disposed of by tarring him as a right wing whacko but Clarence Thomas, who even Republicans would acknowledge was a little light in the resume department, was confirmed despite serious questions being raised as to whether he made sexually inappropriate comments to a subordinate (ah...remember back when we found stuff like that offensive? Back before Bill Clinton?). Democrats could say any absurd and disgusting thing they wanted about Bork--a straight, white, male, Christian--without any risk of alienating a single constituent. But when it came time to go hammer and tongs against Clarence Thomas they were constrained (somewhat) by nervousness over attacking a black man. The campaign against Judge Thomas ended, for all intents and purposes, when he accused Democrats of conducting a "high-tech lynching". You could practically hear Joe Biden's butt pucker in fear at those words.

So Democrats have made the decision, politically wise even if morally indefensible, to fight all conservative minority nominees to lower courts in the hope that they can prevent any more people of color from gaining the experience that would make them more qualified for appointment to the Court. They figure, probably correctly, that they can get away with nearly anything in this low profile nomination battles, but that in the national spotlight of a Supreme Court confirmation proceeding that they would have to restrain themselves. If they can throttle the Miguel Estradas of America in their cribs, Democrats hope that will never have to face the full grown monster, their worst nightmare : a conservative Latino with impressive credentials.

You can argue, as Mr. Beinart wishes too, that the problem with Mr. Estrada is his politics, not his racial profile. But you can't ignore the fact that the reason there's an urgency in Democratic circles over these kinds of nominations is because of the ethnicity of the nominee. That may not qualify as racism, merely treating someone differently because of their race without any personal animus entering into the equation, but since Democrats argue the opposite where other forms of racial profiling are concerned, it seems only fair to hold them to their own standards. As Mr. Beinart must know, opposition to Miguel Estrada does indeed have something to do with race.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 19, 2002 7:37 AM