GOP Attacks On Thurgood Marshall Legacy Hit Wrong Note
Elena Kagan’s confirmation should hold about as much suspense as the third presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain back in the fall of 2008. As in absolutely none. Just in case the GOP strategists haven’t noticed, a certain underwater oil gusher has crowded all of the make-believe dramas, especially those like the ones that usually bind our political parties together in mortal combat, off the big stage for awhile.
Really, Kagan is so bland, I forgot she was the Supreme Court nominee for awhile. Which means that despite hamming it up for the cameras, the GOP will go along with the Democrats on this and confirm the former Solicitor General after squawking a bit for the cameras. So why are a few Republican senators insisting on making a spectacle of themselves by thrashing the memory of Thurgood Marshall during the televised hearings? They couldn’t appeal to their hardcore believers any more than they already do if they were to dig Marshall’s corpse up, throw a noose around his neck, and lynch him posthumously.
Haven’t they figured it out by now—whatever RNC Chairman Micheal Steele does, do the opposite?
In fact, Senator Jeff Sessions went so far afield of any known rules of logic when he equated the recent Citizens United ruling with Brown vs. The Board Of Education that I had to dig into the archives and pull out an old bit of video commentary by yours truly that actually presumes just the opposite—that the Citizens United ruling was as wrong now as the Dred Scott and the Plessy v. Ferguson decisions were in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Maybe Sessions and his buddies are trying to keep us awake during these hearings. I certainly dozed off during that last presidential debate, when McCain looked like the votes had already been counted, and he knew he was going to end up short.
If we are lucky, maybe someone with some pull will tell these guys that their attacks on Thurgood Marshall are hitting the wrong note.
