The Sotomayer attacks: destructive politics when Americans are in need of constructive solutions.

Republican's identity politics are becoming increasingly odious:

We have Rush Limbaugh:

She's got a -- she's an angry woman, she's got a -- she's a bigot. She's a racist.

Newt Gingrich goes the extra mile, and tweets his accusation from Auschwitz:

White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.

Pat Buchanan spews on MSNBC:

She is also an affirmative action pick, Chris.

And from Tom Tancredo:

I’m telling you she appears to be a racist. She said things that are racist in any other context.

Republicans are courageous defenders of those who face discrimination--right? Yglesias sees this view as problematic:

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.

Shouldn't they at least attempt to disguise their xenophobia as attacks on Sotemayer's liberalism? That would certainly be an easier case to substantiate (though she appears to be rather centrist). Why the ignoble attacks? Isn't the Hispanic vote becoming increasingly important? Well, perhaps not as much as you would think:

Hispanics were not a key component in Obama's win. However, this is not to say that the Republicans should not try to contest the Hispanic vote. As the last scatterplot above shows, further losses of Hispanics would make the Democrats competitive in Georgia, Texas, and Arizona. In some sense this is no big deal, at least at the presidential level: If the Democrats remain at 53% or 54% of the vote, they'll win nationally in any case. If we imagine a national swing of 3% or so toward the Republicans, so they're competitive nationally, then their big risk if they lose Hispanic votes is to no longer be viable in Florida (where we estimate McCain to have won 43% of the two-party vote among Hispanics in 2008). That's the state where Republicans really can't afford to abandon the Hispanic vote.

I figure there could still be a backlash from other immigrant groups against the Republican blitz. These unsubstantiated attacks on Sonia Sotomayer tend to be racially justified and could still be seen as xenophobic by other immigrants who would tend to identify with Hispanics socio-economically. Either way, outside the base there will certainly be some cost. This leads to a frightful but increasingly obvious conclusion: Republicans are pandering to their base with malignant bile with no concern for other groups, and/or they sincerely feel whites are being marginalized by minority voices.

Either avenue is frightening. The United States faces grave challenges and her people face genuine hardships (particularly those working class rust belt voters who inexplicably gravitate towards the Republican party). Hateful mainstream conservative discourse has done nothing in response to those challenges (no healthcare plan) and dialogue is becoming increasingly xenophobic, crowding out moderate Republican voices. The way a heavily militarized United States confronts those ignored challenges--ignored in favor of odious populist pandering--will have profound consequences for the rest of the world. Will the hapless be mobilized towards constructing a progressive plan of action or will they be mobilized towards an enemy (illegal immigrants, terrorists, drug dealers, rappers, 'activist judges', ect.) who is supposedly responsible for their plight?

The Tancredos and Limbaughs of the world have made their choice clear--a choice Noam Chomsky has encountered before:

Now, if you listen to early Nazi propaganda, you know, end of the Weimar Republic and so on, and you listen to talk radio in the United States, which I often do—it’s interesting—there’s a resemblance. And in both cases, you have a lot of demagogues appealing to people with real grievances.

Grievances aren’t invented. I mean, for the American population, the last thirty years have been some of the worst in economic history. It’s a rich country, but real wages have stagnated or declined, working hours have shot up, benefits have gone down, and people are in real trouble and now in very real trouble after the bubbles burst. And they’re angry. And they want to know, “What happened to me? You know, I’m a hard-working, white, God-fearing American. You know, how come this is happening to me?”

That’s pretty much the Nazi appeal. The grievances were real. And one of the possibilities is what Rush Limbaugh tells you: “Well, it’s happening to you because of those bad guys out there.” OK, in the Nazi case, it was the Jews and the Bolsheviks. Here, it’s the rich Democrats who run Wall Street and run the media and give everything away to illegal immigrants, and so on and so forth. It sort of peaked during the Sarah Palin period. And it’s kind of interesting. It’s been pointed out that of all the candidates, Sarah Palin is the only one who used the phrase “working class.” She was talking to the working people. And yeah, they’re the ones who are suffering. So, there are models that are not very attractive.

One shouldn't need to descend this far to realize that inciting populist anger can be a pernicious enterprise.