To say that I’m disappointed by the flagrant bigotry of the Republican Party is an understatement. That they went about trying to destroy the legacy of Thurgood Marshall isn’t all that surprising. However, that they would do so in the public with no shame or remorse, as part of an attack strategy to defeat Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, after years and years of co-opting that same legacy they set out to destroy is absolutely disgusting.
As Suzy Khimm and David Corn point out in their piece from Mother Jones, the head of the GOP, Michael Steele, frequently name-dropped and co-opted Marshall whenever he could while he served as Maryland’s Lieutenant Governor and during his failed 2006 Senate run, where he tried to position himself as a political moderate.
Yet, for all the talk in the confirmation hearings by Senators Kyl, Sessions, Cornyn, Graham, and Grassley about how Justice Marshall was a “judicial activist” with views that concerned them, and that his judicial philosophy isn’t what they would consider to be “in the mainstream;” none of that concerns them when they want to cynically nominate Black people to leadership and judicial positions in the Party or on the Supreme Court.
"Without the '64 act, I do not stand in the shadow of this giant."-Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele, as quoted in The Capital (Annapolis, MD), July 3, 2004
U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas was admitted to Yale Law School under an affirmative action plan to boost minorities to about 10 percent of the freshman class, the New York Times reported in yesterday's editions. –Philadelphia Inquirer, July 15, 1991
"I, of course, have benefited greatly from the civil rights movement, from the justice whom I'm nominated to succeed," Thomas said, referring to retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black member of the Supreme Court. –Chicago Tribune, July 10, 1991
So, for a judicial activist with views not in the mainstream—according to a few white senators from the Deep South, Texas and Arizona—it was perfectly fine for the men who their Party nominated in 1991 to be a Associate Justice, and for the Leader of that Party. How droll.
Further, from a man and Party that has frequently stated in the past that they want to “reach out” to minorities; this isn’t the Ultimate Slap-in-the-Face, but one in a series of them. Memo to the Republican Party: stop trying. When you have senators in your party, from the South no less, bashing a civil rights legend like Marshall so flagrantly, and the head of the party tactically endorses it, you aren’t reaching out to those minorities; you’re bullshitting them.
As Mother Jones put it:
When Steele became chair of the GOP in early 2009, he vowed that his party would reach out to minorities. Trashing Marshall during a nationally televised hearing—as his son sits in the committee room watching—is not going to help Republicans win over many African-Americans. And by joining in—actually, triggering—the Marshall attack, Steele has demonstrated that he's willing to throw even his own hero under the bus for the sake of politics. –Suzy Khimm and David Corn, “Michael Steele's Thurgood Marshall Fail”, June 29, 2010.
Mr. Steele, how’s that "hip-hop makeover" going, again? Right. It isn’t. It won’t. It never will. I’ve been following politics since I was 15; I remember the “Big Tent” the GOP touted at the 1996 Convention in San Diego. I remember the 2000 and 2004 campaigns where they were “reaching out” to Hispanics. I knew that hip-hop makeover was a bunch of crap when I heard it.
I also remember looking down at the 2008 Convention floor in St. Paul (from home, through television) and not seeing all that many Latino and Black faces in it. Throw in this Tea Party nonsense and Arizona S.B. 1070, the constant coding of rich, conservative elitists from within and without the political system about the very same minorities they claim to want to court, and there you have it: there is no Big Tent. There never has been a Big Tent. Unless the Big Tent is full of old, rich Whites, that let a Black or Latino person inside every once in a while to show just how “diverse” they actually aren’t.
Just because you can quote his speeches and get honored by charities bearing his name, that doesn’t make you anything like or close to Thurgood Marshall, Mr. Steele. And neither does that make Justice Clarence Thomas an heir to that mantlehead. However, the bigger point is this: the Republican Party continues to lie about diversity and what you are seeing and hearing, from the Tea Party; to slams against unemployed people; to radio hosts comments, and to senators and congresspeople trying to paint Civil Rights figures as “out of the mainstream”, is the real face of the Right Wing of this nation.
And even so, even as we sit here today with that evidence…there are some people who would allow those wolves to rule again?
For crying out loud.