By Christian Brose
President Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court got me thinking about this very sharp observation by Reihan Salam last week, after Cheney and Obama made their dueling speeches:
National security has become part of the culture wars, only with Dick Cheney as the new Jerry Falwell. It doesn't matter that Obama is escalating the war in Afghanistan or that he's embraced rendition. To Cheney, Obama's anti-torture stance represents the moral vanity of a naïve one-worlder.
We'll be hearing much more about this new culture clash. During the hearings on Obama's first Supreme Court appointment, Republicans will spend more time hammering the Democratic nominee on Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and Boumediene v. Bush than about Roe v. Wade. At the moment, Obama looks untouchable. But the politics of national security could prove his undoing.
I think this is a shrewd point, and it's the first time I'd read this. Presidential power in detaining, interrogating, and fighting non-state actors is one of the hardest and most contentious constitutional debates, right now and for the remaining future. It's a legal growth industry. It is also becoming a sharp line of division between culture-warring elements in each party, much like Roe.
I suspect Republicans will try to drill down and press on these issues in Sotomayor's confirmation, especially since her opinions on them are less well-defined. But it's a fraught strategy, because it opens Republicans up to the attack that they are accusing a rather sympathetic Hispanic woman of not wanting to protect America. This is a political minefield, especially at a time when Republicans are at risk of losing the Hispanic vote for the foreseeable future.
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