Memo to conservatives: Elections matter
Conservative leaders have argued in recent months that ideological purity is more important than winning elections.
This purist approach led the party to hand Arlen Specter his hat and usher him toward the door. It has also led to the decimation of the GOP’s Northeastern delegation.
But the ultimate consequence emerges this week, when Sonia Sotomayor begins making the rounds in Washington DC.
With Democrats holding a nearly-sixty vote majority in the Senate, her confirmation to the Supreme Court is a lock. (Barring a mastodon-sized skeleton tumbling out of a closet…)
Many on the Right have excoriated President Barack Obama for choosing a liberal and a “racist.”
And they’ve assaulted the Republican leadership in Congress for not putting up a bigger fight.
A group of arch-conservatives, led by Gary Bauer and Grover Norquist, is now demanding a filibuster to block her confirmation.
But in a very real sense, core conservatives were the handmaidens (midwives?) of Sotomayor’s rise.
By dragging the GOP outside the mainstream (evidence: a significant majority of Independents now vote Democratic), by driving out moderate “heretics” with primary challenges, and by splintering the Republican Party, the Right has made it well nigh impossible for the GOP to win national elections.
If Republicans don’t get their act together, Sotomayor is likely to be the most conservative Supreme Court justice appointed for a long while.
The truth is that President Obama went with a relatively safe pick for this first appointment. And it’s possible he’ll get a chance to appoint a second Justice in the next couple of years.
And during a second Obama term — or during a first Biden term? — Democrats may get a chance to pick a real game-changer, someone to replace Antonin Scalia.
Sacalie will be 80 in 2016.
If conservative purists are still fuming on the fringes, thumbing their noses at the pragmatists who want to win elections, they could well see a champion of the Right replaced with a champion of the Left.
