The GOP's road map to obscurity

By Ruben Navarrette
2:00 a.m. June 3, 2009

America's largest minority would neutralize its power if it were taken for granted by one party and written off by another.

So I cringe when I think of the damage that Republicans do to their brand by treating U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor with the one thing that many Latinos will not tolerate – disrespect. They know that President Barack Obama's first nominee to the Supreme Court has the goods.

Summa cum laude from Princeton. Editor of the Yale Law Journal. Seventeen years on the federal bench. She didn't just play the game; she dominated it.

After more than 20 years of writing about diversity issues, I knew Sotomayor would be in for a rough ride. Some of her critics on talk radio and in the news media have for years clung to the idea that white males are being discriminated against by affirmative action. However, the attacks against Sotomayor were much swifter and uglier than I imagined.

In fact, I don't even think the White House could have hoped things would turn out this well for the administration and the Democratic Party.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel must have known that he was putting Republicans in a box and making it hard for them to derail the first Latina Supreme Court justice. But how could he have known that so many in the GOP would willingly step into the box, lock it from the inside, then blow it up with irresponsible, hateful and disrespectful language?

All because Sotomayor said in a speech almost a decade ago: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.â€