The GoP played this lie (as in golf, not as in "I did not have sex with that woman" or "I'm going to clean up the corruption in Washington") wrong. They should have raised it, not as an issue, but as an "I hope you will apply the same consideration to any similar case that comes before the Court that you gave to joining and maintaining your membership in this exclusive women's club" sort of way. They could have continued with "We are on your side on this one, Judge Sotomayor. We believe the Constitution you have sworn to uphold provides the basic human right of any citizen to assemble with any other citizen who so consents and that government has absolutely no say in the matter." I think that would have been a more resonating and, in the future, useful approach. We've got to quit losing sight of what it is we stand for in our zeal to oppose whatever the other side proposes. If you haven't listened to the grassroots groups co-mingling with Administration officials that pretty well flood the CSPAN radio waves each day, there is an excitement in the Democratic Party and they firmly believe that what they are doing is fixing a horribly broken United States of America and that they are on a mission the likes of which this nation has not seen since the Civil War. When people feel they are on a, so-to-speak, "mission from God", all that confrontations such as GoP just did with Sotomayor become are the equivalent of mosquitos buzzing around your ear...annoying, mildly-distracting and something you want to squash the second you get the chance...unless of course the President buckles to intense pressure from his core constituency and signs an Exec Order directing staff/government officials to "relocate" buzzing pests instead of swatting them. But I digress.
The GoP played this lie (as in golf, not as in "I did not have sex with that woman" or "I'm going to clean up the corruption in Washington") wrong. They should have raised it, not as an issue, but as an "I hope you will apply the same consideration to any similar case that comes before the Court that you gave to joining and maintaining your membership in this exclusive women's club" sort of way. They could have continued with "We are on your side on this one, Judge Sotomayor. We believe the Constitution you have sworn to uphold provides the basic human right of any citizen to assemble with any other citizen who so consents and that government has absolutely no say in the matter." I think that would have been a more resonating and, in the future, useful approach. We've got to quit losing sight of what it is we stand for in our zeal to oppose whatever the other side proposes. If you haven't listened to the grassroots groups co-mingling with Administration officials that pretty well flood the CSPAN radio waves each day, there is an excitement in the Democratic Party and they firmly believe that what they are doing is fixing a horribly broken United States of America and that they are on a mission the likes of which this nation has not seen since the Civil War. When people feel they are on a, so-to-speak, "mission from God", all that confrontations such as GoP just did with Sotomayor become are the equivalent of mosquitos buzzing around your ear...annoying, mildly-distracting and something you want to squash the second you get the chance...unless of course the President buckles to intense pressure from his core constituency and signs an Exec Order directing staff/government officials to "relocate" buzzing pests instead of swatting them. But I digress.
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