Gibbs and Obama now speaking for Sotomayor

When you see the Drudge headline, you’ll probably assume that Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court to replace Justice David Souter, was interviewed and said that she chose her words poorly. The current Drudge headline, which includes a prominant picture of Sotomayor reads CHOSE WORDS POORLY.

Follow to the Associated Press story and you quickly find out that Sotomayor has been quiet since the nomination announcement, and Obama and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs are now officially speaking for her. My emphasis added.

… “I’m sure she would have restated it,” [President] Obama flatly told NBC News, without indicating how he knew that. …

“I think that when she’s appearing before the Senate committee, in her confirmation process, I think all this nonsense that is being spewed out will be revealed for what it is,” Obama said in the broadcast interview, clearly aware of how ethnicity and gender issues are taking hold in the debate.

The president’s damage control underscored how the White House is eager to stay on message as the battle to publicly define Sotomayor picks up.

Obama’s top spokesman, Robert Gibbs, told reporters about Sotomayor: “I think she’d say that her word choice in 2001 was poor.”

Gibbs, however, said he did not hear that from Sotomayor directly. He said he learned it from people who had talked to her, and he did not identify who those people were. Sotomayor herself has made no public statements since her nomination became official Tuesday and was not reachable for comment.

Look, she’s going to get in unless some early summer surprise comes around, but that does not mean conservatives should shut up about her judicial record and her feelings about the Constitution.

For those of you who state we need to shut up or the Republican Party is going to loose Hispanic votes, what did Bush’s outreach to Hispanics during his administration “buy” the GOP? It’s not about race at all, it’s about political (socialist/liberal/conservative/libertarian) principles.