Ed Rollins, former aide to President Reagan, is an unabashed conservative. Nevertheless, he’s also very pragmatic and a smart guy to boot, and makes a compelling case about why Sonia Sotomayor is qualified and will ultimately be confirmed.
I can see the diaries on Redstate already brewing. Wait for it....Wait for it....Wingnuts heads explode, and call for Rollins to be ousted from the Republican Party along with Colin Powell and Tom Ridge.
He writes in his column on CNN Today http://www.cnn.com/... that while Satomayor is indeed a liberal, she has impeccable qualifications to be on the supreme court. Suggesting otherwise and nitpicking at a few of her quotes cherrypicked from here and there is nothing more than a surefire way to marginalize even more women and Hispanic voters. Rollins makes the sensible case that while he may not agree with her on many issues, Obama did indeed win the election. He’s a liberal, and he’s going to put liberal tilting justices on the supreme court. That’s not conjecture, that’s just the way it is. The way to proceed isn’t to slash and burn as the wingnuts are so prone to doing. It’s to carefully examine her record, ask fair but pointed questions, and vote on her based on her qualifications.
Rollins sees the writing on the wall. This lady is qualified to say the least. She’s going to be confirmed, there is little doubt in anyone’s mind on either side of the aisle. So why spend untold amounts of political capital on something that’s not going to pan out in the end? Republicans have so little to spend right now anyway.
The problem is that wingnuts are tone deaf to anything approaching logic and will heartily disagree with Rollins. They see each and every decision Obama makes as the end of the world. If Obama proclaimed today as "be nice to kittens and puppies day", rest assured that the wingnuts would find some way to brand it as nefarious and evil and would rail against it, as if their very lives depended on it.
Rollins is the kind of pragmatic, smart guy that the Republican party needs. Ditto for Colin Powell. Unfortunately their views and opinions are quickly and hastily shot down by the loud screeching wingnut faction.
And by the way, that would be an awesome name for a rock group: The Loud
Screeching Wingnuts.