During the presidential campaign and post election the GOP “brand” was compared to dog food. Needless to say the brand was seriously damaged and GOP leaders quickly came up with a rebranding strategy. Fast forward to the present and the once powerful “brand” is still in shambles.
In fact from a marketing perspective, it is so bad that it would be a low end corn based generic dry dog food sold as surplus. Such is the ebb and flow of American politics as the pendulum swings from one end to the other extreme. With President Obama’s selection of Sonia Sotomayor for supreme court justice the lowly GOP “brand” has come out barking.
The only problem is that the bark has no teeth. One of the early critics to come out swinging was former congressman Newt Gingrich. With his political aspirations in the wing to run for president in 2012, he has had a change of heart. In his own words,
“My initial reaction was strong and direct — perhaps too strong and too direct. The sentiment struck me as racist and I said so. Since then, some who want to have an open and honest consideration of Judge Sotomayor’s fitness to serve on the nation’s highest court have been critical of my word choice.”
These words are closer to bringing us to the center of the debate instead of being so far to the right. If Mr. Gingrich and the party leaders expect to reconstruct the “brand” to its glory days it seems the majority want a sensible and civil debate on the issues. Republican Congresswoman Kay Bailey Hutchison by far has set a moderate and lady like example with her response to TV interviews. Even the noisy Rush Limbaugh is saying he might support judge Sotomayor if, “I can be convinced that she does have a sensibility toward life in a legal sense.”
I will leave the judging of her qualifications to legal experts. Suffice it to say that from what I have read so far, she not only qualifies but has greater “brand” strength than the noise makers fighting to stay relevant and marketable. These are the now famous words quoted in context, you be the judge of her intent, “Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases….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.”
Sources:
CNN Limbaugh ready to support Sotomayor?
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/04/limbaugh-ready-to-support-sotomayor-2/
Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor: You Read, You Decide
http://newt.org/tabid/102/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/4266/Default.aspx
Photo: Sonia Sotomayor
