Former President George H.W. Bush, originally nominated Sonia Sotomayor to become a U.S. District Court judge during his presidency in 1992. Now the elder Bush is telling his Republican colleagues to stop the name calling and smears directed at President Barack Obama’s historic nominee of the very first hispanic to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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“It is not right” to call Sotomayor a racist, Bush told CNN recently. “She was called by somebody a racist once: That’s not right,” Bush said. “I mean, that’s not fair. It doesn’t help the process. You’re out there name-calling. So let them decide who they want to vote for and get on with it.”
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Actually, several right-wingers have been very active in trying to attach the “racist” label to Judge Sotomayor. “She’s a bigot, she’s a racist,” Rush Limbaugh declared on his radio show. “White man racist would be forced to withdraw: Latina woman racist should also withdraw,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. And former Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, who is a longtime immigration opponent has also joined in the fray.
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Rush Limbaugh has recently attempted to run those who dare criticize him out of the Republican Party, including former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell and Sen. John McCain’s 97-year-old mother. So the question remains: Will Rush now call for the 85-year-old former Republican President Bush to apologize to him or get lost from the Republican Party as well?
