Sotomayor proving resilient to GOP’s efforts at criticism

? A week before her Senate hearings, Republicans are floundering in their efforts to trip up Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, unable to find an effective message about why she’s not fit to serve.

Blame the tricky politics of opposing the woman who would be the first Hispanic justice, especially for a party struggling to broaden its base and whose chief spokesman on Sotomayor has a troubled history of racism allegations.

Add to that the mathematical impossibility of Republicans’ rejecting President Barack Obama’s first high court nominee, and it’s a recipe for a weak-kneed response.

Conservative advocates have noticed, and they’re not happy.

“Too many Republicans and conservatives planned to lose instead of planning to win” the debate over Sotomayor, said Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch. His group has mounted strong opposition to the federal appeals court judge.

About half the Senate’s Republicans are willing to raise serious questions about Sotomayor and there’s “a sizable minority who — partly because she’s Hispanic — just want this to go away,” said Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice.

Conservative groups have sought to convince Senate Republicans that they can benefit politically by strongly opposing Sotomayor. But many of their leaders complain the message isn’t getting through.

There are good reasons for Republicans to be holding back, wondering what their best approach is to opposing a nominee who’s broadly acknowledged to be qualified and whose past rulings make it difficult to pigeonhole her as a liberal crusader.

The GOP has just 40 votes in the Senate — well short of the majority they would need to defeat Sotomayor or to sustain a drawn-out effort to block a final vote to confirm her.

Even if they could stall Sotomayor’s nomination, though, it’s evident that many Republicans don’t think it’s politically prudent to take on a Hispanic woman, given the GOP’s low standing in the polls and its efforts to appeal to women and minorities. Those groups traditionally have shunned the party.

The issue of race and ethnicity has proven a toxic one for the key Republican carrying the party message on Sotomayor: Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the senior GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which begins hearings on Sotomayor on July 13.

Sessions’ own nomination for a federal judgeship in 1986 was scuttled by allegations that he made racist comments and targeted black civil rights leaders as a federal prosecutor in Alabama.

He denied those charges. But he did acknowledge making what he called some off-color “jokes,” such as calling civil rights groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People “un-American.”

Sessions has spoken in similar terms recently about a Puerto Rican legal advocacy group on whose board Sotomayor sat from 1980 until 1992.

“This is a group that has taken some very shocking positions with respect to terrorism,” Sessions said of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, citing its defense in 1990 of Puerto Rican nationalists who 36 years earlier had wounded five lawmakers during an attack on the House while it was in session.

Sessions said Thursday the group’s stances on issues from capital punishment to race were “extreme.” His staff raised concern about its ties with the community organizing group ACORN, which Republicans routinely describe as a radical organization.

Democrats said the GOP was grasping at straws.

It’s not that Republicans aren’t criticizing Sotomayor. Early on, they went out of their way to treat her gently, trying to distinguish themselves from party firebrands such as radio host Rush Limbaugh and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who called her a racist.

In recent days, GOP senators have faulted her for her stance on gun rights, her ruling against white firefighters who alleged reverse discrimination, and her participation in the Puerto Rican legal advocacy group. They’ve raised questions about her ability to be “color-blind.”