Notes From D. R.

Two perceptive columns by Stephen G. Calabresi in the Weekly Standard and Peter Kirsanow in National Review, with an interesting slant on the current controversy concerning President Bush’s judicial nominees. Sam Rosenfeld of the American Prospect pooh-poohs Calabresi and Kirsanow’s contention that Democrats have a vested interest in opposing Bush’s black and Hispanic candidates, but I think the claim has merit.

Rosenfeld points out that the presence of prominent black Republicans such as Clarence Thomas has done little to boost the GOP’s vote share among nonwhites. Up until now, that’s been true—but that doesn’t mean that things won’t change over the next generation or so. Black and Hispanic loyalty to the Democratic Party has been predicated upon the belief that the post-Barry Goldwater GOP is an anti-minority party. While the actions of certain Republicans—most recently Trent Lott—have reinforced that belief, President Bush (like him or not) has gone out of his way to try to destroy that belief with his appointments of Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Rod Paige, Alphonso Jackson, Alberto Gonzales, Carlos Gutierrez, and Elaine Chao, not to mention his (aborted) 2001 nomination of Linda Chavez as Labor Secretary. Say what you will about Bush or his appointments, but you have to admit that when it comes to the issue of race, there’s a distinct difference between W and, say, Jesse Helms.

As Kirsanow notes, if nonwhite voters slowly begin to reject the notion that the GOP is against people of color, such an event would seriously injure the Democratic Party—thus, the attacks on Powell and Rice by such figures as actor/singer/Democratic activist Harry Belafonte, the depiction of Thomas as a lawn jockey on the cover of the now-defunct Emerge Magazine in 1996, etc. Calabresi and Kirsanow are not wrong to point out how the attacks on Bush’s black and Hispanic nominees are quite similar to these past ad hominem attacks on nonwhite Republicans. (I will grant that Janice Rogers Brown is probably a bit too close ideologically to the Alan Keyes types for my taste, as opposed to Thomas, who’s actually quite libertarian if you read some of his opinions closely. However, contrary to Rosenfeld’s argument, it’s not too much of a stretch to assert that the Democrats are against people like Brown and Miguel Estrada  for reasons that have more to do with racial politics and less to do with perceived extremism.)