Shailagh Murray and Michael D. Shear write that “An all-out assault on Sotomayor by Republicans could alienate both Latino and women voters, deepening the GOP’s problems after consecutive electoral setbacks.” But on the other hand, “sidestepping a court battle could be deflating to the party’s base and hurt efforts to rally conservatives going forward.” It seems to me that it should be easy enough to get the conservative base riled up about something else in the near future. I recall that as recently as last week, the conservative base was furious that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi didn’t want to torture people.

In terms of Latino voters, meanwhile, the problem facing Sotomayor’s critics is that she’s almost certainly going to be confirmed. And, once confirmed, she’ll be the first Latina justice on the Supreme Court. Soon after that, there’s going to be an inspirational Sonia Sotomayor biography for kids. Probably two, since one will be in Spanish. Responsible parents and teachers of poor Latina students are going to want to point to her life as an example of how if you work hard and stay in school, you can succeed in America despite many disadvantages. Indeed, look at this editorial in today’s edition of El Diaro (English translation here):

Tras la muerte de su marido, Celina Sotomayor veló por sus dos hijos. Les dio techo y proveyó el pan de cada día. Los guió en medio de las vicisitudes y tentaciones de la adolescencia en EE.UU. Como tantas mujeres latinas, es la roca de la familia.

La hija de Celina, Sonia, tuvo que seguir probándose en instituciones dominadas por hombres – en la Universidad de Princeton, en la Facultad de Leyes de Yale, en la Fiscalía de Manhattan, en tribunal de Nueva York. Cada paso requirió gran trabajo y una seguridad inquebrantable.

Para la madre y la hija, hubo pocas latinas que pudieron servir como modelos a seguir y guiarlas. Hoy, gracias a sus luchas y su arduo trabajo, podemos decirle a nuestras hijas: estudien y podrán llegar tan alto y tan lejos como la juez Sonia Sotomayor.

They’re saying that when Sotomayor was growing up under difficult circumstances, there weren’t a lot of examples she could look up to. But today, thanks to the hard work of Sotomayor and her mother, we can say to our daughters that if they study that can go as far as Sonia Sotomayor. Senators who don’t fight and scrape against Sotomayor’s confirmation will take some crap from their base. But Senators who do fight and scrape to derail her nomination are going to become the villains in a story that a lot of kids are going to hear from their parents and teachers.

Much of the political structure in Washington DC seems to be in the grips of a perverse terror that someone, somewhere, might try to open a business near to where potential customers live. Meanwhile, people spend a lot of time wishing there were more things to do and places to shop. Excellent local blogger 14th and You observes:

Imagine strolling through the leafy streets of Georgetown, Shaw, Capitol Hill or other DC neighborhoods. Rather than having commercial corridors expressly laid out along only a handful of specific streets and blocks, picture those shops, restaurants and other businesses interspersed within residential areas. Impossible to imagine in DC? Most likely, but it’s something that you encounter frequently within even the toniest areas of London. In the middle of Chelsea, which contains some of the most expensive real estate in the world, you’ll find commercial strips lined with pubs, restaurants, supermarkets, bookstores, homewares and more. It’s not considered scandalous to locate a pub at the corner of an otherwise residential street. It creates a far more vibrant neighborhood, and not to the detriment of the people living there.

In DC, zoning laws make that idea prohibitive, and what the zoning laws don’t cover ANC and neighborhood groups do in their zealousness to protect residents from interspersing residences with commercial activity. This isn’t a call for unfettered development everywhere in the District mind you, but rather a call for a more sensible adoption of DC zoning laws–as well as local neighborhood opinion–that would ease the nearly complete prohibition of commercial development in otherwise residential sectors. This type of zoning leads to vast swaths of blighted commercial corridors (found in certain central DC neighborhoods) and contributes towards more residential neighborhoods being underserved by commercial activity. Finally, such development also encourages cohesiveness and a greater sense of community within neighborhoods, where the corner cafe or market down the street becomes an additional focal point to residents of the neighborhood.

I really and truly wish libertarians would spend more time working on this kind of issue. And I also wish that ordinary people would think harder about these kind of regulations. I’m a big government liberal. I believe business regulations are often needed. But still, there ought to be a presumption that people can do what they want. When “do what they want” turns out to be “emit tons of air pollution that’s devastating the planet” then in comes the regulation. Or when it turns out to be “make highly leveraged bets that, if they lose, require a government bailout” then you turn to the regulators. But “one guy who lives on the block would prefer to see the restaurant located somewhere else” is not a particularly compelling rationale. In a crowded city, it’s not possible for everything to be exactly how everyone wants it to be, so the current dynamic in a place like DC winds up just favoring stasis and nothing ever changing.

Rush Limbaugh thinks Sonia Sotomayor is a “hack” and worse, “Here you have a racist — you might want to soften that, and you might want to say a reverse racist.”

This seems very confused. Being a “reverse racist” can’t be similar to being a “racist,” it needs to be the reverse of being a racist. Limbaugh clearly just thinks Sotomayor is a racist. She hates white people. For a Latina to hate white people isn’t “reverse” racism, it’s racism. Reverse racism would be if you had a white person who hates white people. It would be like racism, where you hate people of other races, but in reverse.

At any rate, I’ve made this point a million times, but it’s fascinating to me the kind of double standard conservatives apply to these issues. You never hear Rush Limbaugh decrying everyday racism against non-whites in the United States. You never hear him recounting an anecdote about an African-American man having trouble hailing a cab or being followed by a shopkeeper. He doesn’t do stories about how people with stereotypically “black” names suffer job discrimination. He doesn’t bemoan the fact that the United States has an aircraft carrier named after a fanatical segregationist. Which is fine. Everyone’s interested in some things and not in others. Rush isn’t interested in racism. Except that like most conservatives, he’s actually very interested in allegations of racial discrimination against white people. He sees the defense of white interests as integral to his political mission. And he hates identity politics.

It seems to me that if conservatives want to avoid a Hispanic backlash against their attacks on Sonia Sotomayor they might want to come up with a better spokesman than anti-immigrant zealot Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO):

Indeed, Tancredo might want to ask himself why he was invited on The Ed Show in the first place? Was it because Ed has the best interests of the conservative movement at heart, and was looking to promote the most credible possible conservative voice? Or was it that Tancredo was invited specifically because he’s such a bad spokesman?

Ali Frick takes us back:

Remember, Tancredo is the lawmaker who called Miami a “third world country” because of the number of Latinos there, criticized presidential candidates for “pandering” by participating in a Spanish-language debate, and accused immigrants of “pushing drugs, raping kids, and destroying lives.” He said the issue of immigration is “whether we will survive.

Of course Puerto Ricans aren’t immigrants, but they have many of the same Spanish-speaking, nation-destroying qualities as immigrants from Latin America.