He 'believes' that a Hispanic voter will go conservative if Republicans vote for a "Latina", but not if they don't? How did that work out for Miguel Estrada? His CV is practically identical to Sotomayor's.
From Wikipedia: strada was born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. After his parents divorced, he immigrated to the United States to join his mother when he was 17, arriving with a limited command of English.
He graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree from Columbia in 1983. He received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree magna cum laude in 1986 from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, Estrada served as a law clerk to Judge Amalya Lyle Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He then clerked for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court during his first year on the Court in 1988.
It's always been 'about the game' with him.