Craziest Conservative of the Day: G. Gordon Liddy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A candidate for craziest conservative of the day each and every day, Watergate felon and celebrity conservative G. Gordon Liddy jumped on the anti-Sotomayor smear campaign with this doozy:

Let's hope that the key conferences aren't when she's menstruating or something, or just before she's going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.

And that was after he referred to Spanish as "illegal alien."

Yes, I expect such sexism, racism, and nativism from conservatives like Liddy, but what we mustn't overlook is that Liddy himself is extremely popular. He's just not some wacko outlier. And his assault on Sotomayor mirrors what other conservatives have been saying about Sotomayor.

The popularity of Liddy, and of his views, and, in this case, of these views on Sotomayor, a distinguished jurist who just happens to be a Hispanic woman, says a lot about conservatives and conservatism today.

And it makes me wonder how any self-respecting woman is a conservative, or a Republican, given that this sort of bigotry is so popular on the right and throughout the GOP. The same goes for any self-respecting Hispanic -- or any self-respecting person generally.

For more, see Jill over at Feministe, as well as Eli at Firedoglake, Yglesias, Skippy, Larisa Alexandrovna, and Blue Gal.