The GOP, to its detriment, is still playing games

I didn't see every minute of every Sunday talk show, but what I did see was ... troubled. Why troubled? Because in my television market Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was the first, on CNN's "State of the Union," to hammer away at that Luntzian qualifier of Republican sensibilities. With respect to the political fixation of the week -- Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court -- Ms. Hutchison let us know that she was "troubled" by this and very "troubled" by that.

The purported cause of her trouble -- Sotomayor's 2001 oratorical musings on unblind justice, strikingly akin to Samuel Alito's 2006 pre-confirmation reflection that "When a case comes before me involving ... an immigrant ... I can’t help but think of my own ancestors because it wasn’t that long ago when they were in that position" -- seemed of little intrinsic concern. What did mark Hutchison's comments was, rather, a manifest yearning to let the reactionaries know that she hadn't abandoned them.

For the grownups in TVland, Hutchison naturally offered more of that Republican fair-mindedness and level-headedness that we've come to know and expect from the always fair and steady GOP. On the other hand, she -- wink-wink -- was very troubled by the jurisprudential plague that is about to rain down upon us. So take heart, Hispanophobes and lovers of demagogic broadcast lunacy everywhere. Kay -- you betcha -- hears ya.

Following Ms. Hutchison on "State of the Union" was her boss, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who was also "troubled" -- again, by Sotomayoresque, but not Alitoesque, stated facts of judicial reality. What made McConnell's appearance so entertaining, however, was his rather peculiar trip down filibuster-memory's lane.

Would Republicans pull that political stunt? John King asked. Would they filibuster? McConnell's beady little eyes went all kaleidoscopic at that point, until he postured -- sorry, until he remembered -- that the judicial filibuster was a uniquely Democratic instrument of gross parliamentary unfairness first employed during the Bush administration, thus rendering it (a) fair game. And the base cheered. You go, boy.

Elsewhere, specifically on "Fox News Sunday," Sen. Lindsey Graham was "troubled" as well, and over at NBC's "Meet the Press" we were treated to Sen. Jeff Sessions, who -- need I say it? -- was also "troubled." (Was there some sort of private, early-Sunday-morning drinking game going on? -- complete with high-fives and slurred shouts of, "There goes another one"?)

Sessions added the Alabama version of the Texas two-step, saying he "preferred" that a nasty term like "racist" not be applied to Judge Sotomayor -- Gregory: "Do you think she's a racist?"; Sessions: "I think that she is a person who believes that her background can influence her decision. That's what troubles me" -- but unctuously refrained from outright denouncing it.

So once again, the GOP Message of the Day lunged loud and clear: We sorta know this is the malign species of politics that is killing us; but folks, we just can't quite make a clean break from it, because as far as we can tell, it's about all we've got to sustain us in our time of ... trouble.

To be fair, I should note that Sen. John Cornyn, appearing on ABC's "This Week," was merely "concerned" -- concerned being a distant notch below troubled in my definitional book of emotional unease. Perhaps he was absent at Saturday's all-for-one-and-one-for-all strategy session. I don't know.

Anyway, what puzzled (itself a notch below concerned) was that Mr. Cornyn seemed to idealize a system of justice in which adjudicating computers would be preferable, if not possible, to human beings. That is, he metaphorically likened justice to a game and judges to umpires. Yet baseball's durability has derived, in large part, from its exceptionally innate humanness, replete with individual judgment-calls and all; just as in many legal cases there is no comprehensive manual, no binary formulas, on hand to substitute for the robed one's human discretion.

That, however, is but momentary subtext to this column's rather exhortative theme; which is, simply, if the GOP wants to survive -- something, obviously, no one doubts -- at some point it's going to have to make a clean, surgical break from its old base. It's going to have to walk away from its racists and homophobes and theocons and egocentric lunatics riding the airwaves and just say, to itself and all others, No more -- and we aren't going to play verbal games about it, either. That's all finished. We as a party are sober, serious-minded, responsible players once again. Now let's debate the budget.