Judge Sotomayor

This nomination shouldn't be controversial. Judge Sotomayor is clearly highly intelligent and capable. She is a personal and political reflection of Obama - one with a compelling personal story, and a practical, centrist-conservative outlook.

Politically, the choice might be brilliant, not only for the obvious reasons, but also because the scorpions on the right* will have revealed themselves for what they are: "nattering nabobs of negativity."**

Imagine a slightly alternate universe, where John McCain won the presedential election of '08, but everything else is the same. Suppose President McCain nominates Judge Sotomayor for the SCOTUS. What response would you get from Rush, Newt, and Ann?

Difficult to say for sure, but I suspect they would be falling all over themselves to sing her praises. This crowd, and their followers, have neither integrity nor a coherent political ideology. They will oppose Obama wth the same mindless partisanship that they opposed Clinton. They will do everything they can imagine to obstruct and deter.

After all - what is important to the richfluegel is that Obama fails.

That is all they have. It is all they are. Maybe, as the confirmation process moves forward, another 1 or 2% of the population will come to realize that. Wouldn't a filibuster be a magnificent demonstration of their mindless obstructionism?

Johnathon Turley weighs in on the Sotomayor selection here. His critique is balanced and restrained. Does he damn her with faint praise, or praise her with faint damnation?

UPDATE
Judge Sotomayor is likely to be a disappointment to Liberals, since she is not one of them.

Greenwald gives some background, and casts the idiocy of reichfluegel objections into bold relief.

Because of her background, ethnicity and gender, hordes of people who know nothing about her and haven't bothered to examine what she's actually done as a judge instantaneously believe this caricature, while the media keeps repeating these accusations without, as usual, any critical scrutiny.

As happens virtually always, the facts are now starting to be examined and they reveal just how deliberately false are these right-wing smears. They just make things up without having any idea if they're true. Not only is that caricature of Sotomayor false, the opposite is true: if anything, Sotomayor's flaw is that she is excessively legalistic in her approach.

UPDATE 2
My, my. Ed Rollins tells the Republican party (and assorted right wing nut jobs) to shut up and go home, more or less. He also burps out a few partisan bubbles, but we'll give him that, since most of his article is sensible, and all of it appears to be well-intentioned.

UPDATE 4
From The Whitehouse:

If confirmed, Sotomayor would bring more federal judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice in 100 years, and more overall judicial experience than anyone confirmed for the Court in the past 70 years.

But who cares about that kind of trivia?

UPDATE 5
Scott Lemieux previews the upcoming battle.

UPDATE 6
From Urbino.

UPDATE 7
Matt Yglesias on Identity Politics.
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* (UPDATE 3) Twit Gingrich, frex.
** I never expected to quote Spiro Agnew, but, hey -- isn't life full of surprises?!?