Dumping principles to save them

The day after Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, I read this in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Republicans will need to tread lightly in opposing the woman who would be the first Hispanic justice, lest they risk further alienating the nation's fastest-growing group of voters. Republicans experienced a sharp drop in Latino support in 2008, after eight years of efforts led by former President George W. Bush to increase the party's appeal.

Well now, that was inspiring, wasn't it? One's mind conjures the image of gutless wonders with public opinion monitoring devices attached like colostomy bags to their hips. I also am put in remembrance of the knee-knocking lackey of the imperious Cruella De Vil, when she snarled at him, "What kind of sycophant are you!" He trembling replied, "Um . . . what kind of sycophant would you like me to be?"

If the GOP really has a problem with Ms. Sotomayor because her judicial actions are out of line with their convictions, do they really imagine they will save themselves by jettisoning the very principles they supposedly want to preserve? How much do you give away before you have totally sold out your identity? And come to think of it, were any of Bush's Hispanic appointments able to make that community fall in love with them?

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was right, way back in 1978:

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage. . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites. . . . Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice.

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