Rush Limbaugh attacks on Sonia Sotomayor may prove toxic to GOP

Rush Limbaugh

It doesn't take an excessive amount of political prowess to criticize a Supreme Court nominee and the strategy has been used by both the RNC and the DNC to raise funds for election campaigns.

Since the nomination of Federal Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor by President Obama, criticism leveled at Sotomayor has moved beyond critical reasons why Republicans shouldn't like her (and thus donate money so more Republicans can be elected), to wild accusations that border on hysterical.

It isn't coincidence that I applied the word 'hysterical' to the recent attacks on Sotomayor.  Hysterical or hysteria is a word that stems from the root word hyster, referring to the womb and the word hysteria was originally based on the sexist assumption that the womb itself caused uncontrollable, emotional behavior and was limited, inherently, to women.

The vilest hysterical attacks on Sotomayor have come, not from elected representatives in the Republican party, but from those who have volunteered to shoulder the mantle of 'town crier' for the GOP.

Loudest and most hysterical is Rush Limbaugh who ignores and skews facts to rant and rave hysterically to his listeners, calling Sotomayor a racist and all but blubbering about the oppression of white people.

How do you get promoted in a Barack Obama administration? By hating white people or even saying you do, or that they're not good or put 'em down, whatever...make white people the new oppressed minority and they're going right along with it because they're shutting up.  They're moving to the back of the bus and I can't use that drinking fountain, okay.  I can't use that restroom, okay.

Limbaugh appears to be hoping to stoke the fires of racial discord among his listeners who call themselves ditto-heads, listeners who seemingly prefer to allow Limbaugh to do their thinking for them.  Nobody in the Obama administration has declared that they hate white people.  The majority of the Obama administration is in fact made up of white people.  Sonia Sotomayor has never said she hates white people.  But Limbaugh's hysterical comments would have his listeners believing that everyone in the Obama administration hates white people and that they (his listeners) are now "oppressed."  

Karl Rove implied earlier in the week that Sotomayor isn't intelligent enough to be a Supreme Court Judge.  He also said her colleagues don't like her.  Later in the week, Rove apparently remembered that women and Hispanics vote and tempered his earlier remarks saying,

I think Republicans need to take her on in the appropriate fashion which is about judicial philosophy, her record on the court, her writings and her statements. They need to do so with respect.

But it's too late, the damage is done.

RNC chairman Michael Steele was criticizing Sotomayor before Obama announced his nomination of her.  On May 8, Steele called Sotomayor "abrasive" and said the Supreme Court is "not a place for abrasive personalities."  This week, Steele is revising his critique of Sotomayor and advising Republicans to "step back from this."  Once again, it's too late, the damage is done.

TV personality Glenn Beck called Sotomayor an "Hispanic chick lady."

It would be easy to dismiss Limbaugh, Beck and other radio and TV showmen as simple entertainers with a penchant for generating ratings which translates into advertising dollars were it not for the unfortunate fact that Limbaugh has taken on the role as "titular head" of the Republican party and elected Republicans have let him by cowing before his mammoth wrath.  Every elected Republican who has dared speak a word construed as critical of the P.T. Barnum-like showman has subsequently acquiesced to Limbaugh's reactionary rage by apologizing with cringe-worthiness.

Limbaugh, Beck and Rove aren't the only non-elected Republicans who have exhibited symptoms of hysteria.  Tom Tancredo has equated the Hispanic non-profit organization, La Raza, an organization similar to the NAACP, with the KKK and forged a tenuous guilt-by-association link to Sotomayor.

G Gordon Liddy, convicted felon, stooped to an all time low by calling the Spanish language the language of illegal aliens and then intimating that Sotomayor and consequently all women, are incapable of rationale by sheer virtue of their ability to give birth, surmising that Sotomayor would be influenced by "menstruation."

Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich called Sotomayor a racist and said she should withdraw herself from the running for Supreme Court judge.  Resignation seems to be a favorite theme with the disgraced former Speaker.  He admonished Nancy Pelosi to resign as current Speaker for saying the CIA lied to Congress.  Gingrich himself resigned the Speakership in 1998 because while being one of the leading voices calling for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky, he was having an affair with his young secretary.  The discredited Gingrich has lately been back in the political arena spreading his opinion whenever given the chance.  What his motivation is is unclear but what is obvious is that he is contributing to the toxic meme that is poisoning the GOP.

If it is the GOP's strategy to alienate and exclude women and Hispanics from the Republican party, then one could say that the aforementioned men have been successful.

The hysteria with which these men have reacted to the nomination of a Latina woman to the Supreme Court of the United States is toxic to the health of the Republican party.  During the first three months of the Obama administration, the GOP has been perceived by Americans as the 'Party of No.'  

Thanks largely to former vice-president Dick Cheney and his pal Rush Limbaugh, the GOP can now add the descriptive, "party of torture" to its repertoire.  Since Obama nominated Sotomayor to Supreme Court and the subsequent hysteria that has emanated from Limbaugh, Liddy and Beck, the GOP can now add the descriptive, "racist, woman-hating, Hispanic-loathing party" as part of its new meme.

One single elected Republican has apparently realized that the poisonous venom spewed by Limbaugh and his brethren-in-hysteria is poisoning the GOP and decided to break the silence.  On Friday, Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn said in an interview on NPR,

This is not the kind of tone any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advice and consent.  Neither one of these men [Limbaugh - Gingrich] are elected officials.  I just don't think it's appropriate and I certainly won't endorse it. I think it's wrong. I think it's terrible.

Senator Cornyn should be applauded for daring to stand up to "titular head," Rush Limbaugh.  If Cornyn, like his elected Republican predecessors capitulates to the inevitable wrath fest coming from Limbaugh, it wont be surprising but it will be disappointing and another nail in the coffin for the GOP.

As the 'Party of No, the Party of Torture, and the Racist, Woman-hating, Hispanic-loathing party, the GOP will continue to shrink.  The vitriolic and contrived outrage over Sotomayor's nomination is dangerously toxic to the Republican party.  If elected Republican officials choose to remain silent, thus choosing to allow showmen and entertainers like Limbaugh, Beck and Liddy to be the collective voice for the Republicans, there will not be the merest dim glimmer of hope on the horizon for the GOP to thrive and grow again.