30
May

When it was a GOP Latino Nominee…

Posted by: Wordsmith @ 8:48 am in Politics, Race, Racism, SCOTUS  | 25 views

…with a compelling story, skin color seemed to matter to the Democrats then, as well:

In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated former Justice Department lawyer Miguel Estrada to a seat on the federal courts of appeals. In that instance, as today, the nominee was was a Hispanic with a compelling story and impressive qualifications. And some of the very people who are today praising Sotomayor spent their time devising extraordinary measures to kill Estrada’s chances.

Born in Honduras, Estrada came to the United States at 17, not knowing a word of English. He learned the language almost instantly, and within a few years was graduating with honors from Columbia University and heading off to Harvard Law School. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, was a prosecutor in New York, and worked at the Justice Department in Washington before entering private practice.

Estrada’s nomination for a federal judgeship set off alarm bells among Democrats. There is a group of left-leaning organizations — People for the American Way, NARAL, the Alliance for Justice, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the NAACP, and others — that work closely with Senate Democrats to promote Democratic judicial nominations and kill Republican ones. They were particularly concerned about Estrada.

In November, 2001, representatives of those groups met with Democratic Senate staff. One of those staffers then wrote a memo to Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin, informing Durbin that the groups wanted to stall Bush nominees, particularly three they had identified as good targets. “They also identified Miguel Estrada as especially dangerous,” the staffer added, “because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment. They want to hold Estrada off as long as possible.”

It was precisely the fact that Estrada was Hispanic that made Democrats and their activist allies want to kill his nomination. They were determined to deny a Republican White House credit, political and otherwise, for putting a first-rate Hispanic nominee on the bench.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 30th, 2009 at 8:48 am and is filed under Politics, Race, Racism, SCOTUS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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4 comments so far

Mike's America
 1Reply to this comment  

Let’s finish the story:

Durbin and his colleagues did as they were instructed. But they had nothing with which to kill the nomination — no outrageous statement by Estrada, no ethical lapse, no nothing. What to do?

They brainstormed. Estrada had once worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Solicitor General, right? (Appointed under the first President Bush, Estrada stayed to serve several years under Clinton.) That office decides which cases the government will pursue in the Supreme Court, right? And that process involves confidential legal memoranda, right? Well, why don’t we suggest that there might be something damaging in those memos — we have no idea whether there is or not — and demand that they be made public?
Durbin and his colleagues knew the Bush Justice Department would insist the internal legal memos remain confidential, as they always had been. It wasn’t just the Bush Administration that thought releasing the documents was a terrible idea; all seven living former Solicitors General, Republican and Democrat, wrote a letter to Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy begging him to back off.

But the Democrats didn’t back off. They had a new, very serious question to ask: What is Miguel Estrada hiding?

The answer was nothing, of course. But the strategy worked. Democrats stonewalled Estrada’s nomination, and, after losing control of the Senate in 2002, they began an unprecedented round of filibusters to block an entire slate of Bush appeals-courts nominees, Estrada among them. The confirmation process ground to a halt. More than two years after his nomination was announced, Estrada, tired of what appeared to be an endless runaround, withdrew his name from consideration. Instead of being on the federal bench, he is now in private practice in Washington.

And that was how Democrats treated the last high-level Hispanic court nominee. Think about that when you watch their lovefest with Sonia Sotomayor.

Dems totally fabricated the case against Estrada and FILIBUSTERED him. And did they pay a political price for that obstruction? Apparently not as they retook control of Congress a few years later with the benefit of a massive outpouring of contributions from the far left groups whose orders they followed.

Again, I am not recommending a filibuster of Sotomayor, but I marvel at the GOP strategists who fear we will pay a price for opposing her. The GOP will pay a price if they do NOT oppose her.

May 30th, 2009 at 9:47 am
uri
 2Reply to this comment  

My question is if the Republicans are powerless as the Democrats and the media wants us to believe, what do we got to loose by opposing Sotomayor? If the Latino vote is gone anyways amd the women will not vote for GOP candidates, let’s just filibuster Sotomayor.

May 30th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
CalCon
 3Reply to this comment  

” …but I marvel at the GOP strategists who fear we will pay a price for opposing her. The GOP will pay a price if they do NOT oppose her.”

AMEN! When will the GOP grow a pair and fight back? They should be on every talk show reminding everyone about what the Dems did to Estrada, and state their opposition will be fair and based on the facts, not her gender and ethnicity.

I am so sick of hearing wussy GOPers caving to left’s predictable name-calling tactics. When will they learn that we are going to get that even when we do what they want and apologize for existing? That whole McCain thing worked so well for us, didn’t it?

May 30th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
eaglewingz08
 4Reply to this comment  

I too agree to filibuster. The republicans have nothing to lose by doing so. If the democraps did not lose any hispanic voters by filibustering Estrada, the republicans won’t gain any by approving her. If there are serious philosophical differences that come out at the hearings (assuming republicans are allowed to voice any objections or have enough time to research the candidate, i.e. she is not Nafta tracked for approval by Leahy’s politburo) then we must filibuster. Just whining and saying we’re in the minority what can we do, is not sufficient. The dems never care whether they are in the minority or not, if their precious anti american principles are at stake. Neither must we. If we have a valid pro american principled defense, we must take that to the limit.

May 30th, 2009 at 1:21 pm

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