Republican Reasoning In A (Wing) Nutshell

Or...

How To Broadcast Your Stupidity To Everyone

Today, President Obama did a very intelligent thing, but the reason as to WHY he had to do it was absolutely ludicrous. The President's video below was emailed to millions of Americans in support of SCOTUS nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. For the last eight years, the President has had the power to use the internet to make announcements, pronouncements, explanations, etc. To my knowledge, however, this is the first time the internet has been used by a president in this way.

Now THAT'S smart!

However, the reason he felt compelled to present this visual "resume" was because of cluelessness on the part of some Republicans who have vowed to block his nomination, no matter how qualified that nominee might be.

Now THAT'S stupid!

Judge Sonia Sotomayor's qualifications:

• Graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton
• Received Princeton's highest undergraduate award, the M.Taylor Pyne Prize
• Served as editor of the Yale Law Journal
• Became managing editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order
• Spent 5 years as a prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney
• 12 years on the Board for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (pro bono)
• On the Board of the State of New York Mortgage Agency, providing mortgage insurance coverage to AIDS hospices (pro bono)
• Helped found the New York City Campaign Finance Board (pro bono)
  

This morning on WTOP, Curt Levey, executive director of the right-wing Committee for Justice, compared Sotomayor to ...Harriet Miers (?!?):

I would point you to the Harriet Miers nomination under the second President Bush. She was also many people felt and (sic) intellectual lightweight, picked because she was a woman, people felt. And even though Republicans controlled the senate, she ultimately had to withdraw. And that could happen here. This is someone who clearly was picked because she’s a woman and Hispanic, not because she was the best qualified. I could certainly see red and purple state Democrats gawking at it and she may very well have to withdraw her nomination. (Emphasis my own)

HT: Think Progress

Is there any logic to the above statement? A comparison to Harriet Miers is dumb enough, then to show bigotry on top of that is horrendous idiocy. But being a far right Republican, Levey has to reiterate his stupidity by saying that a judge appointed TWICE by former presidents, and one who brings more judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any other judge in the past 100 years, is UNQUALIFIED?

Of course, Rush Limbaugh also chimed in with incredible insults, daring Republicans to oppose the nomination:

But here is why -- even though she may not be able to be stopped -- here is why Sonia Sotomayor needs to be opposed by the Republicans as far as they can take it. Because the American people need to know who Barack Obama really is and his choice of Sonia Sotomayor tells everybody, if we will tell the story of her, who he is. He got up in his announcement and said everything about her that isn't true: that she's great constitutionalist, that she doesn't use personal opinion, that she understands what her role is and the oath is of a Supreme Court justice. She has done just the opposite of that. She is a hack like he is a hack in the sense that the court is a place to be used to make policy, not to adjudicate cases, not to adjudicate constitutional law but to make policy. She's even admitted it.

But he didn't say what REALLY makes her unqualified: she uses (gasp!) empathy!