Will nativists make La Raza Sotomayor’s version of Obama’s Bill Ayers?

Bill Ayers is the education professor from the University of Illinois at Chicago whom social conservatives tried last year to turn into a millstone around the neck of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama because of Ayer’s activist days against the Vietnam War.

It failed. Most people saw through the cheap rhetoric and considered it a non-issue.

YET THOSE SAME conservatives seem to be trying the technique again. Only now, we’re hearing about the National Council of La Raza and the fact that Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, has been a supporter.

I’d like to think the cheap rhetoric will again be ignored (how else to explain the absurd comments from former Congressman Tom Tancredo). That means I’m putting my faith in the intelligence of the American people.

It just seems that the same people who remember the name “Willie Horton” and the way it helped take down the 1988 presidential dreams of Michael Dukakis will spend their lives trying to come up with symbols meant to scare the public, rather than trying to find a solution to the problem. Of course, those people largely ARE the problem.

For those interested in learning more about the latest demonization of La Raza, this site’s sister weblog The South Chicagoan (http://southchicagoan.blogspot.com/) offers a detailed commentary worth reading.

-30-