Whether or not it was politically motivated, President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court should come as little surprise to Republicans. After all, the Democrats suggested her name to Bush in 2005 before Chief Justice John Roberts was appointed. And the Republicans stalled her nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1997-1998 due to a concern she was being “fast tracked” to the highest court.

Sotomayor has a compelling life story and an impressive resume. In short, she is a Hispanic version of Barack Obama. They both experienced difficult childhoods in troubled families. Like Obama, her father died when she was young. Both Obama and Sotomayor rose above their circumstances to excel at Ivy League schools. While Obama served as president of the Harvard Law Review, Sotomayor was the editor of the Yale Law Journal. Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, and Sotomayor was an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law and lecturer at Columbia Law School.

Sotomayor, who refers to herself as a liberal, was first nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H. W. Bush in 1991. She was recommended for the spot by Democratic New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had promised his constituents to get a Latino appointed to the federal bench. At the time, she was thought to be a centrist.

Conservatives fear Sotomayor is yet another liberal activist who will use the Supreme Court to make law, rather than simply interpret it. A video from Duke University on February 25, 2005, shows her proclaiming that the “court of appeals is where policy is made.” And in 2001, Sotomayor made a controversial comment in a lecture titled “A Latina Judge’s Voice” at the University of California, Berkeley Law School. She said, “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.” The remark was in the context of her saying that “our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.”

Had either John Roberts or Samuel Alito been recorded saying their experiences as white males allowed them to reach better conclusions than women or minorities, they would not have survived the ensuing controversy. But there appears to be a double standard in the politically correct environment we call Washington, D.C.

Obama scores double political points for appointing a Latina woman to the Supreme Court. Although her confirmation has never been in doubt, Sotomayor’s public statements regarding judicial activism have given the Republicans some interesting talking points. Since five swing states have growing Hispanic populations, the GOP must tread lightly in its opposition to Sotomayor considering that McCain only pulled in 31 percent of the Latino vote last year.