US rightwingnutters in throes of Supreme panic?

"A lot of district attorneys thought they were doing God's work. But she saw it as a civic responsibility."

That's an observation shared by a former colleague of Sonia Sotomayor. And it goes a long way towards explaining why many Republicans and right-wing fundamentalist religious zygote zealots are opposed to her nomination to the Supreme Court of the US.

... Because it is difficult to dismiss her academic credentials and her professional experience, some on the right have resorted to the politics of personal destruction. Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice said in a radio interview that Judge Sotomayor was picked because "she's a woman and Hispanic, not because she was the best qualified." Former congressman Tom Tancredo sank to even greater depths when he called Judge Sotomayor a "racist" for her past affiliation with the Hispanic advocacy group, the National Council of La Raza; Mr. Tancredo called La Raza "a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses." Former Bush adviser Karl Rove implicitly questioned Judge Sotomayor's intelligence, saying in an interview with PBS host Charlie Rose that "I know lots of stupid people who went to Ivy League schools."

There's more:

... a coalition of conservative group leaders and opinion leaders has signed a letter calling on Senate Republicans to filibuster President Obama’s Supreme Court choice, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. ... The conservatives say their intent is not to kill the nomination, as Democrats used the tactic, but rather to provide for lengthier debate on its merits. The signatories include a broad swath of the conservative movement, including evangelicals, gun-rights advocates, anti-tax leaders, anti-abortion groups, libertarians and local Republican leaders.

Oh, and the most damning "evidence" that's been dragged up from Sotomayor's past pronouncements gets royally raked over.

“Here you have a racist,” said radio’s Rush Limbaugh of Sotomayor, nominated by President Obama, “the greatest living example of a reverse racist.”“We’re gonna start with the racist quotes from our new Supreme Court nominee,” said Fox News’ Glenn Beck. “I don’t like the charges, well you’re a racist, they’re a racist. But when I hear this, gee, she sure sounds like a racist,” he said of Sotomayor’s statement in a speech that, “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.”

Yet, according to a recent Gallup poll, 54% of the US population would like to see Sotomayor confirmed to SCOTUS. That majority must be, as JABbering Stooge summarized in his tidy wrap-up of Jill Stanek's screed about third trimester abortion: 'evil Satanic, Baby-Jesus-and-America-haters'.