identity politics

(Newser) - Michael Steele is pretty obviously lousy at his job, so why don’t Republicans just fire him? There’s just one reason, argues Gabriel Winant of Salon : race. Steele, you’ll recall, came to power directly after Barack Obama’s election—the Republicans, essentially, wanted their own black guy. Dumping...

(Newser) - Democrats are mistaken to consider the Supreme Court a representational institution, writes George Will in the Washington Post. Justices should be chosen based on their ability to uphold the law, he contends, not "categorical representation," which he detects in Sonia Sotomayor's nomination. "Her ethnicity aside, Sotomayor is...