[
Crossposted at Slingshot.org]
Sam Alito is the new nominee for the Supreme Court. Hours after his nomination, his supporters began branding opponents as anti-Italian. This would be a joke, if the stakes weren't so high.
We've seen it before. Opposition to Miguel Estrada was deemed anti-Hispanic by the Committee for Justice ("Land of Opportunity"). Opposition to William Pryor was deemed anti-Catholic by the Committee for Justice (more on this charge at PFAW). Opposition to Janice Rogers Brown had an "undercurrent of racialist criticism," according to the Committee for Justice's Sean Rushton.
Note the common theme?
The inaptly named
Committee for Justice, lead by former George H.W. Bush White House Counsel
C. Boyden Gray, is in the vanguard of Orwellian identity politics. The "anti-Italian" charges look like more of the same, likely from Gray's "
rapid-response team that keeps in regular contact through e-mail with 1,000 journalists and an additional 500 activists." Of the "
four horsemen," Gray's record points to him as the culprit.
The interesting factor, of course, is where Gray's Committee gets most of its resources: Big Business. At least that's what's been reported; the Committee doesn't disclose its donors. The Committee for Justice was created at the behest of Trent Lott and Karl Rove to funnel business money into the judicial nominations fight. It appears to have been successful in that effort; Stanton Anderson of the Chamber of Commerce and John Engler of the National Association of Manufacturers, among others, sit on its board. Other, less willing Business Lobbyists have been coerced by Rove and his cohort into playing ball.
That doesn't explain why the main champion of Big Business would be trying so hard to divide us as a nation, though. There's nothing in Gray's background to suggest that he's a hateful bigot. The only conclusion is that they simply don't care -- they are concerned only with the corporate bottom line, not the costs born by the country. They want judges that will restrict the ability of Congress to legislate, of victims to litigate, and agencies to regulate. In short, they want complete immunity for their business backers.
Alito appears to be their man.
