Estrada filibuster may galvanize Latino voters

The Detroit News ^ | Tuesday, April 29, 2003 | Ruben Navarette

[BOBTHENAILER]

After several failed attempts by Senate Republicans to break a Democratic filibuster, it's starting to look as if Miguel Estrada may never make it to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The controversial Bush nominee may have to settle for the strangest of consolation prizes: his name plastered on bumper stickers in the 2004 election.

[nanny]

Well, we will just have to agree to disagree - but nominating, hiring, opposing, etc., anyone for any reason other than his/her qualifications is racism or bias. It is wrong - no way you can color it good - no matter if the Republicans are doing it to 'bring in more Hispanics' (in itself a digusting thing to do). There is no good reason - I thought we had a nation of equals here - pushing ahead minorites is not racism or affirmative actions?

I agree with your post almost in its entirety, but I disagree with your tactics.

I don't understand - I have no tactics. I expressed an opinion that we should have an equality of persons in this country and that is tactics?

[nickcarraway]

Even Catholics don't believe or do everything Catholics are supposed to.

True, but saying that important Catholic beliefs are automatic disqualifications is anti-Catholic, just as it would be about any other group. Making a contingent belief of a group an absolute bar to holding a position, is being against that group. All else is lies and politics.

[BOBTHENAILER]

Let me suggest something just totally off the wall - why doesn't the President nominate someone who is qualified, doesn't matter. Nominate that person because he is a qualifed American who loves this country and wants to do what is right for it. Tout that person as a good American

That is the first sane thing you've said on this thread and

IT IS EXACTLY WHAT WAS DONE WITH MIGUEL ESTRADA, PRISCILLA OWEN, PICKERING AND THE RECENTLY CONFIRMED SUTTON

You seemed to have conveniently left them out of your stupid arguements because they don't fit your specious reasoning. Don't bother responding, I'm done with you.

[votelife]

this boils down to this
Estrada is being blocked because he is a conservative Hispanic.

The Dems haven't blocked all conservatives. Shedd was approved. Ashcroft was approved. Sutton was just approved. But, they were all white. So the dems will let white conservatives through (often) but not minorities.

You say he's being blocked because of his politics.
I say he's being blocked because Democrats think that minorities should be allowed to think, vote, or judge conservatively. So I think it is a racist move to block him and essentially say "Estrada is not Hispanic enough"
(Congressman Bob Menendez essentially said this.)

The Dems relented and did not filibuster Sutton today, a white conservative. Therefore, the Senate is approving the white conservative but not the Hispanic.

[votelife]

finally, I'm sure that the vast majority of elected Dems (KKK Byrd notwithstanding) are very sympathetic to minorities...but there sympathy clearly stops the moment that minority starts to have an independant or, gasp conservative, thought!

So what that means in English is your typical Dem who has filibustered Estrada is not Racist in the KKK sense, just racist in the minority vote is mine sense...

This is subtle, but I think that many Hispanics are starting to see the difference.

[nanny]

Please don't attempt to compare this to a handout.

Good try - I am not the one comparing it to a handout the Republicans are. I have been voicing this same thought since this first came up. I am not the one who has called the Democrats racists because they are sticking to their usual liberal politics (as bad as they are). That has been done by Republicans on here and spokespersons for the party.

All of your talk sounds really good, but the truth is that people tend to vote in blocks. Like it or not, but there has to be a plan to make inroads into the Hispanic voting bock. Aside from the Cubans in Miami, they are dems, lock, stock and barrel.

So we are going to become another Democratic party who has blocks of people wanting goodies and we will have to continually give more and more to those blocks because they have 'group issues'. Now my group is America and what is best to keep this country as a free, sovereign, working nation - who is going to represent my interests.

The democrats have the blacks sewed up so the Republicans are going to sell the farm to get a 'group'? That is destructive - very destructive. You might win an election - but what have you won? What have you won?

[votelife]

but nominating, hiring, opposing, etc., anyone for any reason other than his/her qualifications is racism or bias.

I agree, and I don't know why you keep bringing this up. If you don't think Estrada is qualified, than there's probably nothing I could say to convince you otherwise.

I think Estrada is qualified. If I thought he was some affirmative action prop who couldn't do the job, I wouldn't support him.

Same as Condi Rice. If I thought she was an affirmative action, feel good racial move, I wouldn't support her.

All of the minorities I have seen Bush appoint and surround himself with are very qualified in my eyes.

[votelife]

the tactics I disagree with are basically not defending Estrada. If you are posting on this board you KNOW that Estrada has been and will be targeted because he is a minority conservative. So I feel obliged to defend him.

[AlGone2001]

What have you won?

You win people, and you educate them on the idea that people can be self-sufficient. Tax cuts are for everyone in the GOP, not just the rich, or the poor. Tax cuts revive the economy and create jobs. See the difference? See the difference?

[votelife]

I'm wondering if nanny is a disrupter...

[republicanwizard]

Is he viewed as vulnerable?

[AlGone2001]

The democrats have the blacks sewed up so the Republicans are going to sell the farm to get a 'group'?

What has been sold? Name specific things. This is about appointing a highly qualified man to the federal bench, and you can only throw out unqualified statements. He seems conservative enough that the dems are opposing him.

Is President Bush pandering by learning and using the Spanish language>? Is he selling you out with that, too?

[GGpaX4DumpedTea]

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_042903/content/stack_c.guest.html

An Interesting Judge Strategery

April 29, 2003
The Democrats disregard the Electoral College and say: Bush didn't win the popular vote, so he can't appoint a single judge. Senate Republicans are "tired" of fighting for Bush nominees like Miguel Estrada and Priscilla Owen. Robert Novak reported that they want to give up, just as Ted Kennedy predicted they would when he came up with this strategy.

If I were in charge of the Senate GOP, I'd tell Mr. Bush to start filling the bench with recess appointments. The president can make such appointments when Congress is out of session, and he should do so - not just with Estrada and Owens, but with guys liberals fear like Robert Bork! That's right: Let's Bork Again! These Democrats rewrote the Constitution. It says a president needs 50 votes to confirm a judge, but they raised the threshold to 60 - the number needed to break a filibuster. So Bush should make tons of recess appointments, and promise to stop them only when Democrats give his nominees the fair, up-or-down floor vote the Constitution of the United States requires.

Just imagine Judge Bork getting recess-appointed to the D.C. Court of Appeals - where he has previously served - for a temporary period! He'd sit there until the next Congress convenes, and it would drive Tom Daschle and Ted Kennedy off a bridge. They're obsessed with getting activist judges who encroach on the legislature's power to write laws on the bench, and keeping Bush judges who interpret the law off the bench. They know that the liberal agenda can't win at the ballot box, so they're packing the court with Clinton's appointments as they shut out Bush's.

No, folks, you can't say, "The Republicans did the same thing." They did no such thing. Senator John Kyl of Arizona put out the following in a March 2, 2003 statement: "While over 90% of Reagan, Bush I and Clinton circuit court nominees were confirmed in their first two years in office, less than half of President Bush’s original circuit court nominations have even had an up or down vote in the Senate. Some have waited nearly two years for even a hearing. If the Democrats succeed with this filibuster – which requires 60 votes to break - they will have effectively changed the rules that have governed our country since its founding." There is an answer: recess appointments.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_042903/content/stack_c.guest.html

[GGpaX4DumpedTea]

It is time for Iowa farmers and other decent folk in that once great state (I am native of Iowa, gives me the right to sound off) to tell the leftists in Iowa City and other bastions of left wing professor influence to pound salt and get rid of Harkin and his like in Iowa politics.

[nanny]

You seemed to have conveniently left them out of your stupid arguements because they don't fit your specious reasoning. Don't bother responding, I'm done with you.

Nope, you can just spin any way you want and when someone calls me names, I know I have hit the nail on the head and there is no way out.

He was nominated because he was Hispanic - at least according to all his followers on this site - read the headline. Go back and read all the threads about those m ean old racist Democrats because they don't want to confirm the first Hispanic judge - I didn't say it. I am using the words of the ones supporting the President. I didn't say he wasn't qualified nor did I say he should be nominated because he was Hispanic - the Republicans did.

You can spin this any way you want - but you can't get the slime off that kind of politics. Now if winning and bringing more people of a certain race (what is Hispanic?) into the 'fold' is your objective - you just might be able to do it. I doubt it, because the Democrats are better at it than the Republicans. Now of course, you have to add up the cost of dignity and integrity - is it worth it? Just to say you won. What have you won? The right to act like Democrats?

Once again, if you don't want to be called racist - don't play the game.

[GGpaX4DumpedTea]

Specifics, please. What are, in your opinion the merits of the class action? Why should not Ashcroft be defending it?

[GGpaX4DumpedTea]

Not voting included Miller (D, GA) and Roberts (R, KS) - any good reasons why the did not vote? I would have expected them both to vote "yea".

[nanny]

WEll, you could be right there - that is certainly a thought. But there is no way you can get around the fact that , qualified or no, he was nominated and touted as 'the first HIspanic' - you can't get around that. Then when the democrats didn't affirm him, THEY are the racists. Is it worse to nominate a person because of their ethnicty or oppose them? If in fact he was qualified, and I am assuming he is, but was nominated because he was qualfied and because he was HIspanic and then the Democrats are opposing him based on his qualification and his Hispanicness. HMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!

You can't get around the fact he is being nominated to try to get the Hispanic ??? vote. You can't deny that the Republicans have screamed and ranted that the Democrats are racists. In my books, that is racial politics. The end doesn't justify the means.

It didn't with the Trent Lott garbage and it won't with this.

Everytime someone uses these tactics - racial politics and racial blackmail becomes a little bigger part of the landscape of this country - it becomes a little more embedded in everything. That is wrong - just wrong. You can't justify it - no way.

[nanny]

But he is not being touted as qualified but as Hispanic - don't y ou see? He is being defended as Hispanic? Read the headline of this article if you don't believe me. Read the posts on this an other threads. I did not make it up - I am only responding to what I see happening and it is dreadful.

[deport]

Not voting included Miller (D, GA) and Roberts (R, KS)

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I don't have any info as to why they didn't vote.....