Earlier this morning, Manuel Miranda who is heading the effort to convince Republican senators to filibuster Sonia Sotomayor, sent out an e-mail to reporters with Shelby Steele's op-ed from yesterday's Wall Street Journal attached. In the body of the email, he wrote:
If you thought I was referring to Michael Steele, sorry but he is busy avoiding social issues, which apparently includes the debate over a Supreme Court nomination - the single greatest opportunity for Party unity possible. Heck, they do not even have any Hispanics on the payroll. I guess none live on his block.
Ouch. I put in a quick call to the RNC and they claim that they do, in fact, have Latinos on payroll. I'm sort of sympathetic to them on this one: On the one hand, the party is struggling with diversity. On the other, it hardly helps for them to be forced to single out Latino party members in this fashion, and if it I were a Latino RNC employee I'd certainly be irritated and uncomfortable with the whole thing.
Also, debating Sonia Sotomayor's record on say, abortion, is actually really difficult because she doesn't really seem to have one--something that's made folks on both sides pretty nervous.
-- A. Serwer
