If This Is The Best The Extreme Right Can Do . . .

. . . then Sotomayor's confirmation is pretty much a done deal.

The latest anti-Sotomayor Right Wing talking point is that she can't be a good judge because she has a 60% reversal rating. But as Steve Benen notes, the Radical Right is completely full of shit on this one:

Sotomayor has been on the appeals court federal bench for over a decade, and during her career, she's written 380 rulings for the 2nd Circuit's majority. Of those 380, five have been considered on appeal to the Supreme Court. And of those five, three have reversed the lower court's decision. That's how the right gets to a 60% reversal rating -- three out of five, as opposed to three out of 380.

Of course, if that 60% figure were really scandalous, the right should have balked at the Alito nomination -- he had two of his rulings considered by the high court, and both were overturned. (That's a 100% rating! He must have been a horrible judge!)

The irony is, Sotomayor's reversal numbers are actually better than the norm, not worse. Media Matters noted yesterday, "[A]ccording to data compiled by SCOTUSblog, Sotomayor's reported 60 percent reversal rate is lower than the overall Supreme Court reversal rate for all lower court decisions from the 2004 term through the present -- both overall and for each individual Supreme Court term." * * *

I'm no expert on the Supreme Court, but as I understand it, not every case which is appealed to that Court is granted review. It doesn't surprise me, therefore, that of the cases the Supreme Court actually decides to review, a majority of them would be reversed.

But the Radical Right can get away with this type of bullshit talking point because the right-wing base is made up of a bunch of idiots who will believe anything that Limbaugh, Cheney, or Hannity tells them.