The G.O.P.’s Sotomayor Serendipity
This week, a disgruntled young haberdasher will grudgingly wrap a roll of flaccid measuring tape tightly across the “bust,” up the inseam, and around the “seat” of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as he attempts to fit a black robe elegantly upon her droopy, rather inelegant body. According to a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, the measurements will remain confidential until an intern finds the time to cross out all the “spicy” dimensions with a black Sharpie. But the DHS haberdasher isn’t the only one whose task is to make Sotomayor look like someone else entirely.
According to the G.O.P., left-leaning judges like Sotomayor ought to be reprimanded for “politically incorrect” slip-ups, especially those concerning the outlawed topic of race. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was outraged by the bigotry expressed by Sotomayor in a 1999 interview (apparently he no longer considers Spanish to be the “language of the ghettos”). Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina was also deeply offended, feeling as though his race made him the victim of unwarranted labeling. After all, Sotomayor did say that under certain circumstances, a Latina has better judgment than a white man. Translated into Graham’s native tongue (Carolinarepublican), the statement actually reads: “white men can’t judge.”
In reality, the G.O.P.’s finest have finally found an opportunity to play the “race card” themselves. Lindsey “the Leech” Graham sucked all the votes he could out of Sotomayor’s personal history, spending so much time trying to appear as the victimized, merciful, eternally wise sage of the cold-blooded Congress, he almost had me feeling sorry for my white little self.
But then the b.s. started to stink, and I soon found myself preparing for some kind of hockey-mom joke. Speaking directly to Mrs. Sotomayor in the Senate chamber, Graham explained ever-so-politely: “My Republican colleagues who vote against you, I assure you, could vote for a Hispanic nominee.” A grin crawled steadily across his puffy pink cheeks, like a baby whose disposable diaper had just expired. The reason that some Republicans will vote against her nomination, according to Lindsey, is more complicated than race or partisan differences:
“They just feel unnerved by your speeches, and by some of the things that you said, and by some of your cases.”
So what exactly are those “things that [Sotomayor] said” that keep Republicans awake at night later than an Argentinian mistress? Graham implies that a split second of 1999, when Sotomayor uttered something about her race without proofreading her words, is what frightens the delicate antiracists of the Right. Thanks to Senator Graham, we now know that Republicans are actually afraid of racism, and Sonia Sotomayor is an anti-white Leftist Latina.
Is there some kind of reality TV show being filmed in Columbia? Or is all the drama choreographed in the studios of the major news networks?
Isn’t it lovely when the checks and balances of the Constitution become ceremonies to bolster political campaigns? Why bother paying for a campaign commercial to broadcast your moral integrity when the media coverage can be hijacked for free? Never mind the importance of formal government proceedings, like the appointment of a Supreme Court Justice who will likely serve 30 years on the bench. What did they teach us about Court nominations in government class? I was taught that Congress was to gauge whether or not a Supreme Court nominee was fit to interpret the Constitution in the way the Founders intended it. Sounds much more respectable than a campaign commercial, doesn’t it?
But politicians like Lindsey Graham are nasty hypocrites with no respect for any part of the federal government that cannot be construed as an opportunity to gain more power.
Okay, so politicians are crooks, bandits, and cross-dressing cock-teases. Nothing new. So what’s the lesson here? Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Lindsey Graham isn’t the problem, but rather the product of a rundown system: bureaucratic bipartisanism. The system is “bureaucratic” in the sense that major industries rely on federal spending programs that politicians are inclined to sustain, for many of their careers are sustained by the bureaucratic infrastructure. Bipartisanism is at fault because of the fact that both parties are inclined to shred the limits of government intervention as enumerated in the Constitution. Why shouldn’t the parties spend more? With no-limit credit cards they can buy votes, campaign finances, and bureaucratic power for politicians (not to mention hookers and home additions) without ever having to pay the bills!
The two parties share a mutual advantage in avoiding inter-party debate over spending, so distracting attention away from spending and towards meaningless quibbles helps both the parties by providing an alternative arena of competition.
The problem with “the game” is that frivolous government spending comes at the cost of those without competitive political alliances: namely the poor—who suffer from inflation and government intervention in the markets—and the future generations, who will be left with an inconvenient debt of tens of trillions of dollars simply because our government has no accountability when it comes to spending. The two parties are in cahoots with one another, the Fed, and the mainstream media, while the vast majority of voters seem perfectly fine with choosing between “A” and “B” on a November Tuesday, rejoicing their terrific freedoms with a deafening “Star-Spangled Banner” and a red and blue “I voted” sticker stuck conspicuously upon their lapels.
The bipartisan bureaucratic system simply cannot self-perpetuate forever, if for no other reason than the skyrocketing national debt. A challenge to the hegemony of the two parties has been the ill-fated dream of third party sympathizers for many generations, but times are changing. The Campaign for Liberty offers the strongest platform for challenging the two party system in today’s disillusioned America, where patriotism is too often confused with freedom, political gossip mistaken for constructive debate, and a woman’s measurements mixed up with her credentials. By bringing the Constitution to the forefront of political debate, C4L is a serious and long-term threat to the frivolous, parasitic Republicrats hiding behind Old Glory.
