Josh Marshall on the strategy of calling the Dems anti-Catholic for opposing Pryor.
talkingpointsmemo.com
August 1st, 2003 -- 2:09 AM EDT // link)
Republicans constantly complain that Democrats play the "race card" whenever blacks or other minorities are involved in some political question or nomination or the like. And certainly the charge is sometimes valid.
The striking contrast, however, is with Republicans who now do this in virtually every case, even in the most preposterous instances, without a hint of shame, and usually without garnering much of any criticism at all from the capital's self-styled arbiters of political sportsmanship.
So far Senate Democrats have stalled three of the president's appeals court nominees: Miguel A. Estrada , Priscilla R. Owen, and today William H. Pryor, Jr.
Of those three, Republicans accused Democrats of opposing two on the basis of religious and/or racial prejudice.
That's a pretty high percentage, don't you think?
Democrats supposedly opposed Estrada because of anti-Hispanic bias and now they're purportedly opposing Pryor because of anti-Catholic bias.
According to a July 7th article in Roll Call, the group that spearheaded the claim that opposition to Pryor was based on anti-Catholic bigotry plans to do the same thing with the next controversial nominee who's coming down the pike, Carolyn Kuhl. She happens to be Catholic too. So, what the hell. Run it up the flagpole and see what happens.
No one with a shred of intellectual honesty thinks that this is really the case in any of these cases. It's understood by everyone that this is merely another political cudgel thrown into the mix to raise the heat on Democrats. In fact, it's done precisely because Democrats have large constituencies of Hispanic and Catholic voters.
It's entirely cynical, entirely obvious, everyone knows what the score is, and yet these hacks manage to get pretty much a complete pass.
-- Josh Marshall |
