Obama's Sotomayor spin does not work

Ruth Marcus:

Nice try, Mr. President, but I’m not buying the poor-choice-of-words defense for Sonia Sotomayor. “I’m sure she would have restated it,” President Obama told NBC News about his Supreme Court nominee’s now-famous 32 words: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, "I think she'd say that her word choice in 2001 was poor.”

You spin the speech that’s dealt you. But it seems clear to me that Sotomayor, to quote that great jurist Dr. Seuss, meant what she said and said what she meant. This was no throwaway line or off-the-cuff linguistic stumble along the lines of the judge’s other controversial comment about appeals courts making policy.

Rather, Sotomayor was deliberately and directly disputing remarks by then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor that a wise old woman and a wise old man would eventually reach the same conclusion in a case. “I am…not so sure that I agree with the statement,” Sotomayor said....

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Marcus makes a good point about the context of the remark. The irony is that the initial defense of the remark was that it was taken out of context. Then Obama tries to say she wishes she had been more careful in her remarks, but the fact is she was. What she really wishes is that she had not been recorded.

When you add the context of the Ricci case to these remarks she should be in trouble, but I think the Democrat majority does not care and may actually support discrimination against white men. For years they have floated along as if reverse discrimination was a victimless event, but Ricci makes that more difficult for them. It is even harder when you have a black President nominating a Latina.