Dems Fumble Sotomayor Defense

From Kenneth P Vogel and Josh Gerstein at Politico:
As Republicans continue to hammer Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor for a 2001 assertion that’s become known as the “wise Latina” remark, her backers are struggling to come up with a single coherent line of defense.
In the past few days, supporters confronted with the remark have offered a range of divergent tactics and tones, offering explanations that span from apologetic to defiant to suggesting Sotomayor may have been joking.
President Obama himself addressed the bubbling controversy, which is emerging as among the leading GOP lines of attack against Sotomayor, asserting on Friday Sotomayor “would have restated” the comment if given another chance.
But that message – which reaffirmed the official White House spin articulated earlier the same day by press secretary Robert Gibbs – did little to build consensus among Sotomayor supporters, who took to the Sunday show circuit with a cacophony of explanations for the comment, which Sotomayor made during a 2001 speech at the law school of the University of California, Berkeley.
In the speech, which was later published as a law review article, Sotomayor, a federal appellate judge who is of Puerto Rican descent, said: "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." . . .
Questions about judges’ experiences coloring their decisions will continue to dog Sotomayor supporters. That’s because Republicans have focused their opposition on allegations that she injects her personal feelings into court decisions driven by her policy objectives, citing three pieces of evidence: the “wise Latina” quote, a 1996 law review article in which she asserted the law is fluid and subject to differing interpretations, and a case in which she sided with a Connecticut city that had thrown out the results of a promotion exam for city firefighters because almost no minorities scored high enough to qualify for promotions.
“If the legislative law doesn’t sit with her, she finds a way as a judge to get around it, in my opinion,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Fox News Sunday. He declared her “wise Latina” comment “troubling,” said it shows she thinks she’s superior and that it calls into question whether “she really understand what America is about.”
“It’s inappropriate and I hope she’ll apologize,” Graham told Wallace. “If I had said something like that – or someone with my background and profile [had] – we wouldn’t be talking about this nomination going forward.”