Judge Sotomayor's confirmation is more or less a foregone conclusion. She is a moderate nominee by any definition and with 60 Democratic votes in the Senate the GOP will be hard pressed to marshall even token resistance. Short of a filibuster and the politically suicidal consequences thereof, Judge Sotomayor will soon be Justice Sotomayor.

Which makes all of this right-wing grandstanding a bit puzzling.

Turn on C-SPAN and you'll see Democrats and Republicans grilling Judge Sotomayor on an array of topics but it is all little more than political theater. The American people expect a certain degree of deliberation on this matter and the Senate is only too happy to pose for the news cameras while they give it to them.

Yet, inexplicably, the Republican Party has chosen to cast itself as the villain in this particular production. Unable to offer meaningful resistance to Sotomayor's confirmation, the Senate Republicans could have gone quietly into the night but have instead opted to turn the proceedings into a hysterical fit of racially charged doom-saying.

It's bad politics.

Republicans have three major demographic/political groups to consider in their Sotomayor strategy. The first - the white, middle American, independents - are unlikely to make meaningful political decisions based upon Republican grandstanding during the confirmation hearings. The nominee's adequate credentials and bi-partisan appeal (she has now been nominated by both a Republican and Democratic President) will tend to make her and President Obama look reasonable and gracious in their eyes and those loudly protesting petty and childish.

The second group, the Republican base, will find fault with Sotomayor simply because she was nominated by President Obama. This ~20% of Americans is the same 20% that still approved of the job President Bush was doing when he left office in 2008 and very likely the same 20% that has convinced itself that Barack Obama was born in Kenya despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. While the Senate Republicans' protests will play very well with this crowd their voting patterns are unlikely to waver. This sort of song-and-dance might serve to generate enthusiasm among the party faithful but with no major national electoral contest for another year and a half the effort is largely wasted.

This leaves the final and most pivotal group: Latinos. The Latino population of the United States is growing extraordinarily rapidly. Many of the states with rising Latino populations are traditionally "Red" states (particularly in the south-west) and three electoral heavyweights - California, Texas, and Florida - have large Latino voting blocks as well. While Latino voters tend to ally with the Democratic Party that affinity is weak as minority voting blocks go. The Bush years pushed Latino voters closer to the Democratic Party but back in 2002 four in ten Latinos saw no major difference between the parties. With distance from the Bush Presidency, the block could still be up for grabs.

But not if the Republicans keep after Sotomayor.

Sotomayor's qualifications and middle-of-the-road political stances make it more likely that Latinos will see attacks on her as based around her ethnicity, a tendency that is elevated by the GOP's fixation upon her "wise Latina" comment. It is a racial slight that the GOP can not afford. Indeed, strident opposition to Sotomayor's confirmation risks making, as Electoral-Vote.com puts it, "Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada (currently 19 electoral votes) Democratic for the next 10 years," all over a confirmation battle the Republicans simply can not win.

Far from being a political liability, Sotomayor's "wise Latina" remark is proving to be political mana from heaven for a Democratic administration that badly needs to build political capital for its legislative agenda.