One surefire way to understand the Left is to listen to every complaint it levies against its opponents and instead apply it to the Left. This often develops an accurate picture from the negative that leftists present as reality.

One example of this is Rachel Maddow’s continual focus on Senate Republicans’ alleged obsession with “playing the race card” during the Sonia Sotomayor hearings. Her proof consists of questions Republicans asked Sotomayor about her racialist “wise Latina woman” remark, Congressional Democrats’ treatment of Hispanic Bush federal judicial appointee Miguel Estrada, and one off-hand remark made by Sen. Jeff Sessions, a favorite target of leftist media commentators (including Maddow).

Sessions told Sotomayor:

the circuit voted and you voted not to reconsider the prior case. You voted to stay with the decision of the circuit. And, in fact, your vote was the key vote. Had you voted with Judge Cabranas, himself of Puerto Rican ancestry, had you voted with him, you could have changed that case. So in truth, you weren’t bound by that case.

Maddow, as well as The Huffington Post, jumped on the comments as proof Sessions asserted “Sotomayor Should Have Been Influenced by Her Ancestry.”

The facts would be clear to anyone familiar with the situation: Barack Obama nominated a racialist judicial activist who ruled on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that banning felons currently in prison from voting is a form of racial prejudice according to the “plain terms” of the Voting Rights Act. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs warns Republicans to “be exceedlingly careful” in opposing her, lest they be branded racists. The Left and mainstream media (but then I repeat myself) trumpet the historic importance of the first African-American president appointing the first Latina Supreme Court justice. When the demoralized GOP finally has her on the stand, Sessions simply made reference to her racialist statement that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male.”

Sessions mentioned she was hiding behind legal precedent, when she could have overturned it in her decision. Then he noted a “wise” Latino, Judge Cabranas, himself wanted to overturn the case; if Hispanic judges make “better” decisions than others, why did this fellow Puerto Rican also believe Sotomayor had reached the wrong decision? In other words, Sessions’ words were reversal of Sotomayor’s racialist obsession, an admission that, yes, Hispanics are allowed to reach different decisions.

Maddow (who is obsessed with race) spun this, quite expectedly, into a Republican obsession with race, leading with this non-story last night, as she has for days.

Only leftists, in a still liberal-dominated media, can get away with a strategy at once so hypocritical and so shameless: create a racially charged environment; nominate a racialist Affirmative Action pick who admits, “If we had gone through the traditional numbers route of [entering Princeton and Yale Law], it would have been highly questionable if I would have been accepted…With my academic achievement in high school, I was accepted rather readily at Princeton and equally as fast at Yale, but my test scores were not comparable to that of my classmates.”

Next, threaten to publicly lynch anyone who questions her credentials; then when the Republicans note the Left’s obsession with race, use it as proof Republicans are obsessed with race.

Brilliant!