He didn’t know which Judge Sotomayor America would get, or so says John Cornyn.

The Texas Republican senator couldn’t bring himself to vote for federal appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor and her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Cornyn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, disregarded a lengthy list of solid qualifications in voting - as expected - against Sotomayor in a panel vote this week.

Sotomayor has 17 years of experience as a federal judge, the most such experience of any candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court in nearly 100 years. In terms of balance, she has sided with her Republican-appointed colleagues about 95 percent of the time in rulings made by the federal panel of which she is a member.

Regarding specific cases involving claims of gender and racial discrimination, Sotomayor has ruled with the majority of her colleagues in 44 of 46 such cases. It was a Republican president, George H.W. Bush, who originally appointed Sotomayor to a federal judgeship.  After that appointment (in 1992), she was promoted years later to a federal appeals court by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Sotomayor received the overwhelming support of senators of both parties after those appointments by presidents Bush and Clinton.

Her academic credentials are also outstanding, having graduated from Princeton, (undergraduate), and the Yale Law School.

So to recap: Many years of federal judgeship experience, a record of balance in often siding with her Republican-appointed colleagues, showing she follows law and precedent in deciding discrimination cases, and appointments from presidents of both parties. All of that, not to mention the historic distinction of being the first Hispanic ever to receive a Supreme Court nomination, and Cornyn of Texas votes “no.”

Why?

This was a nomination Cornyn could have embraced for all of the reasons cited above, as well as the feel-good historical vibe of the Sotomayor selection. Cornyn, after all, does represent a state that will be majority Hispanic in another generation or two. He could have connected that demographic reality to a Supreme Court nominee who happens to be Hispanic, and much more importantly, is  imminently qualified to be on the high court.

Push-comes-to-shove on a tough vote, though, and Cornyn did what he always does. He  put  ideology first, as well as being the dutiful politican in cultivating his party’s right-wing base, (like always), which is adamantly opposed to Sotomayor’s nomination. For Cornyn ,  political sensibilities and party ideology take priority over the distant needs of embracing the diversity and scope of the people and state he is elected to represent.

What bugged Cornyn about Sotomayor?

Speeches, of the sort Sotomayor made to law school students over the years in which the judge spoke with pride of her Puerto Rican heritage, even referring to herself as “a wise Latina.” Those three words were too much for Cornyn to handle, but he wasn’t the only one. Most of the other Republican senators on the judiciary committee went bonkers over the “wise Latina” comment, devoting hours of questioning to that topic during Sotomayor’s hearings.

Cornyn and his Republican colleagues essentially accused Sotomayor of being obsessed with race and ethnicity when it was they, in fact, who couldn’t get off the subject. No matter her record, Sotomayor could not be trusted due to the “wise Latina” thing. Her record of 17 years as a federal judge may say one thing, but the undercurrent of the “wise Latina” lurks, threatening to surface once Sotomayor makes it to the Supreme Court.

So, Cornyn voted “no.” And so did veteran Republican senators Charles Grassley of Iowa and Orrin Hatch of Utah. Keep in mind that Grassley and Hatch had never previously voted against a Supreme Court nominee in their many years in the Senate. Every nominee that had come before them from both Democratic and Republican presidents they had supported, but not this one.

Why?

Grassley said he still wasn’t convinced Sotomayor could put aside her “prejudices and biases” as a judge, (hello `wise Latina’). Hatch grumped about Sotomayor’s record on gun rights issues, but come on, this is the same senator who voted for liberal high court nominees Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. You’re going to tell us that Sotomayor’s rulings on gun rights issues are to the left of Breyer and Ginsberg? Please. What a  cop out, Sen. Hatch. Just say you can’t bring yourself to vote for a Latina for the high court and be done with it.

No matter, next week all 60 Democratic senators are likely to vote for Sotomayor. Five GOP senators are likely to do the same, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, who said while the “wise Latina” thing bugged him, he wasn’t going to put a few speeches over her 17-year record of being an accomplished and fair jurist. Imagine that, a Republican senator showing some wisdom.

You know, it’s one thing to have senators from Iowa and Utah vote against an esteemed judge named Sotomayor. It’s quite another to have two senators from Texas - of all places - to do the same. This week Cornyn said he would vote “no.”  Next week, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is sure to do the same when the full Senate votes on the Sotomayor appointment. For Hutchison to do otherwise would all but put her aspiring gubernatorial campaign out of business given the need to appease her party’s right wing base.

The “wise Latina” will survive somehow, and so will Texas’ two GOP senators, at least for a while before the state’s changing demographics someday deliver a different vote of their own.

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