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While juggling world crisis in Korea, Iran and the Middle-East as well as preparing for visits to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and France, Barack Obama has managed to squash, nullify and neuter any opposition from Republicans to his choice for the Supreme Court.
A Hispanic, “up from her bootstraps” women judge, Sonia Sotomayor is a deft and politically brilliant choice for his first nomination to the Supreme Court.
In making this choice Obama has reinforced once again his own personal story.
He has picked a candidate who exemplifies his belief that everyone, even from the most modest background, should have the opportunity to succeed.
The choice of Judge Sotomayor is as much a symbol for the Hispanic community as Barack Obama’s election was for the African American community.
It signifies that in America, the doors of power will open for those who work hard and move beyond externally imposed cultural stereotypes to higher ground.
Obama has stressed that he wanted a nominee with real life experience.
Well, this daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants, raised in a Bronx New York housing project to graduate from Yale Law School, clearly demonstrates that those who are poor in America can overcome and become leaders in the larger community.
As a former professor of constitutional law, Obama understands that the Supreme Court is the court of last resort for the often abused and powerless in America.
Politically this particular choice is clever on many levels.
By naming the first Hispanic to the highest court, Obama has paid back a key group responsible for his election victory.
Although the President attempted to do this before with the failed appointment of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as Commerce Secretary, this appointment - if approved - will be longer lasting and much more significant.
The choice of Sotomayor has left the Republicans with an impossible dilemma.
It they attack her “liberalism” or her qualifications to appease their conservative wing, they are likely to alienate the only group they can court to broaden their ever-shrinking political base - the Hispanic Community.
George W. Bush was able to win in two elections by appealing to this religiously conservative group but with tensions mounting over immigration, he may be the last Republican to do so.
A group of “angry white men” attacking a successful Hispanic woman is not an image they would want to project with less than 16 months before the mid-term elections, when all of the House and one-third of the Senate are up for grabs.
Although the Republicans would like to brand her as a “liberal” or a “judicial activist”, they will do this at their own peril.
They can not - in New York terminology - “lay a glove on her”.
Sotomayor will make the sixth Catholic on the nation’s highest court.
Depending on the facts in any given case it may not be so obvious where she will stand on the issues of abortion, the death penalty, torture or the rights of the individual vs. the state.
As the second woman joining Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sotomayor will clearly bring a different generational view of the world.
It is impossible to predict what her appointment would do to the balance of the court on these issues since we do not know how persuasive she might be with her colleagues or what novel opinions or ideas she may have on the major issues of the day.
This nomination will go through and this Federal Appeals Court Judge from the home of the New York Yankees will take her place amongst eight other Justices before the next session begins on the first Monday in October.
Tags: Barack Obama, bronx, Bronx News, Bronx People, Bronx Tale, Community, new york, new york housing, Politics, puerto rican, Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme CourtRelated posts
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