Bush Playing The Race Card To Confirm Judge Brown

by Earl Ofari Hutchinson

(PNS) -- As the GOP attempts to force a Senate vote on the first of seven of President Bush's judicial nominations, for one nominee they've torn a page from the old playbook used to get Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas confirmed in 1991.

The moment President Bush nominated California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown in 2003 to the appeals court, civil rights, civil liberties and women's groups relentlessly hammered her for her ultra conservative court opinions and rulings on abortion, tort reform, the death penalty and affirmative action.

Republicans faced a similar situation with Thomas 14 years ago, and their game plan then was simple. They cast Thomas as a black man that had battled against segregation and was now under fire from racist, elitist white Senate Democrats. Then they muddied his record of conservative activism and mobilized black evangelicals and conservatives to back him.

Thomas followed the script to a tee. He repeatedly harped on his hardscrabble upbringing, in a fatherless home in poor, backwater Pin Point, Ga. This "up from segregation" bootstrap tale brought tears and praise from conservatives. The tale was designed to divide and confuse Thomas' liberal and black opponents.

Similarly, Brown's backers have repeatedly noted that she is the daughter of an Alabama sharecropper. Her rags-to-judicial-riches tale is designed to touch a public nerve and divide and confuse her liberal and black opponents.

When Anita Hill tossed her incendiary accusation of sexual harassment against Thomas into the confirmation fray, the volatile elements of sex and race landed squarely on the nation's table. An angry, indignant Thomas blurted out the eternally memorable line, "This is something that not only supports but plays into the worst stereotypes about black men in this society." It hit like a sledgehammer.

The strategy to play the race and sex card was not wholly Thomas'. His chief backer on the committee, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, urged Thomas to make Hill's attacks a racial issue. That could stir black anger over racial stereotyping, and put civil rights leaders on the defensive. Polls taken the day after he accused Hill of racially degrading him showed that Thomas had turned the tide in his favor.

Hatch dredged up a similar line to defend Brown. He claimed that her critics abhorred her not because of her judicial views but because she is a conservative black woman who has dared stand up for her conservative convictions. Brown took the cue and called the attacks against her insulting, and implied that she was being singled out because of her race.

The Swift Boat Veterans, the National Review, the Wall Street Journal, conservative legal advocacy groups, conservative family groups and columnists Thomas Sowell and Robert Novak have taken the same line. They lambast Senate Democrats as bigots who are tormenting a black woman who had overcome segregation and poverty.

A crucial part of the conservatives' strategy to evoke sympathy for Brown is to mobilize black ministers and conservatives. They did the same with Thomas. The day after Hill made her charges, a parade of black ministers held prayer vigils on the Capitol steps backing Thomas. A group of black women cheered him as he entered the Senate hearing room.

The Traditional Values Coalition, headed by California minister and conservative family values stalwart Louis Sheldon, organized that rally. But the gathering served notice to the press, the senators on the committee, civil rights leaders and Democrats that many black ministers, long thought to be the bedrock of civil rights and social activism in black communities, were conservative and backed Thomas's stance on abortion and family values issues. Black ministers and their congregations could be organized for conservative causes.

The black evangelicals are back for Brown. Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist recently corralled a group of leading black ministers and staged a rally at a park near the Capitol to support Brown. Frist and the ministers proclaimed her a "legal hero" to black America and denounced the threatened filibuster by Senate Democrats. The aim again was to counter the fierce attacks on Brown by the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the National Bar Association. A black rally organizer branded the criticism of Brown by these groups as "partisan rhetoric."

When the chips were down with Thomas, conservatives used race to trump politics. The "black brother under attack" theme helped narrowly put him over the top in the Senate and onto the high court. Now it's the "black sister under attack" theme with Brown. GOP conservatives hope their Thomas playbook plan will work with her, too.