Old Writings: McDonnell’s ‘Latina’

Is Bob McDonnell's thesis fair game?

As our editorial, "Thesis Ridiculous" intimated on Tuesday, conservatives who pored over Michelle Obama's thesis at Princeton hardly have standing to say it isn't.

The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus provides a more recent and more trenchant comparison.

"Just a few weeks ago," she notes, "Republicans were focused on a single sentence from Justice Sonia Sotomayor about the 'wise Latina.' Then, it made sense to focus on Sotomayor's sentence, not her copious judicial record. Now, it's unfair to look at McDonnell's writings when his legislative history is open for all to see."

Touché.

Conservatives now sound like Democrats then who dismissed the wise-Latina remark as old, isolated, and no longer relevant. Liberals now pointing out ways in which McDonnell's legislative record resonates with his Regent University thesis sound like conservatives who noted that Sotomayor used variants of the line multiple times and who juxtaposed the wise-Latina remark with Sotomayor's ruling on racial diversity in Ricci v. DeStefano.

Before nominating Sotomayor, President Obama said he wanted a Supreme Court justice who possessed empathy. We wonder: If Sotomayor has heard about the thesis brouhaha, does she feel McDonnell's pain?