ABC’s Shipman: Sotomayor Is No ‘Elite Liberal Judicial Philosopher’

On Sunday’s This Week roundtable, ABC national correspondent Claire Shipman tried to argue that it would be “very hard” for Republicans to label Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a liberal. “When you look at Sotomayor's record and look at the cases, it's very hard for people to make the case that she's a typical, you know, elite liberal judicial philosopher,” Shipman declared.

That was too much even for liberal columnist Cynthia Tucker, who is currently the editorial page editor of the Atlantic Journal-Constitution but will this summer move to Washington as the paper’s D.C.-based political columnist. “She is certainly liberal, she’s called herself liberal,” Tucker informed Shipman, but agreed that Sotomayor is “nobody’s knee-jerk radical.”

Shipman used to appear on the This Week panel alongside her husband, then-Time magazine Washington bureau chief Jay Carney, but Carney has since joined the Obama administration as a top aide to Vice President Joe Biden.

Here’s a bit more of the exchange that took place on the June 7 roundtable:

CLAIRE SHIPMAN: "I think it's also hard when you look at Sotomayor's record and look at the cases, it's very hard for people to make the case that she's a typical, you know, elite liberal judicial philosopher. I mean, really, she's not. Her cases go back and forth. It's going to be hard for the Republicans to try to pin down what that means. She's tended to give -- to be tough on crime, to give police the benefit of the doubt...."

CYNTHIA TUCKER: "As Claire just said, her opinions don't show -- she is certainly liberal, she's called herself 'liberal' -- but she's nobody's knee-jerk radical. In fact, she often sides with the prosecution in cases, probably from her experience as a young prosecutor...."