GOP moves to tone down criticism of Sotomayor

WASHINGTON — Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are rushing to contain racially tinged rhetoric in the debate over President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, fearing that attacks emanating from some conservatives opposed to appellate court Judge Sonia Sotomayor could damage GOP prospects among women and the rapidly growing Hispanic population.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said today he was “uneasy” over allegations by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and talk-show host Rush Limbaugh that Sotomayor is racist. Sessions, who lost a 1986 bid for a federal judgeship amid concerns over his own racial sensitivity, said Republicans should focus on Sotomayor’s legal record to try to divine what sort of a Supreme Court justice she would make.

“I’m uneasy,” Sessions said in a 30-minute interview in his office in the Russell Senate Office Building. “I don’t think that’s good rhetoric. The question is, has the judge gone too far or not, given the established law of the land?”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, also condemned the remarks by Gingrich and Limbaugh, noting that “neither one of these men are elected Republican officials.”

“I think it’s terrible,” Cornyn said in an interview this week with NPR’s “All Things Considered.” “This is not the kind of tone any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advise and consent.”

“I just don’t think it’s appropriate,” he continued. “I certainly don’t endorse it. I think it’s wrong.”

The effort at message control is to continue Sunday morning with appearances by GOP congressional leaders on all of the major network talk shows, including a joint appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” by Sessions and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The developments highlight the rift within the Republican Party over how to approach the nomination of Sotomayor, the first Hispanic person to be nominated to the high court and who would be one of only two women on the panel if confirmed. Republicans have lost ground badly with Hispanics over the past four years, in part because of rhetoric on immigration and other issues, and GOP centrists believe the party could be headed for political disaster if it mishandles the Sotomayor nomination.

Although Cornyn and other Senate GOP leaders have been generally restrained in their remarks about Sotomayor, Gingrich and other conservatives have dominated the public discussion over the past four days with incendiary allegations about the veteran judge’s views on race and her qualifications for the bench.

Gingrich, for example, focused on a 2001 speech in which Sotomayor said: “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.”

Gingrich wrote to followers on his Twitter account: “White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.”

Limbaugh today compared Sotomayor to Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and has labeled her “a reverse racist” because of a ruling against a group of white firefighters who sued New Haven, Conn., for alleged discrimination.

Former Bush administration adviser Karl Rove has questioned the intellect of Sotomayor, a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, while Curt Levey of the conservative Committee for Justice argued she was “picked because she’s a woman and Hispanic, not because she was the best qualified.”

Former GOP congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado also took Sotomayor to task for membership in the National Council of La Raza, labeling the nation’s largest Hispanic advocacy group as “a Latino KKK without the hoods or nooses.”

The group’s president, Janet Murguia, condemned those remarks in an interview and said: “There should be some sensitivity among factions of the Republican Party who are making these extreme comments. … The optics don’t look very good. It will not resonate well with Hispanics or with women.”