A number of republicans angry over Newt and Rush approach to Sotomayer.

"Some, and they are idiots, look at Judge Sotomayor and say: attack, attack, kill," Noonan writes in The Wall Street Journal. A conservative activist told the New York Times, 'We need to brand her.' Another told me a fight is needed to excite the base.

"Excite the base? How about excite a moderate, or interest an independent? How about gain the attention of people who aren't already on your side?"

More Noonan: "She is of course a brilliant political pick—Hispanic when Republicans have trouble with Hispanics, a woman when they've had trouble with women. Her background (public housing, Newyorican, Catholic school, Princeton, prominence) is as moving as Clarence Thomas's, and that is moving indeed. Politically she's like a beautiful doll containing a canister of poison gas: Break her and you die."

Less eloquently, but more consequentially, Senator John Cornyn is saying much the same thing.

On judicial matters, Senator Cornyn may be the most formidable Republicans in the Senate, and one of the most conservative. But Cornyn tells National Public Radio he does not like to hear Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh call Sonia Sotomayor a racist.

Asked by NPR if he's worried that comments like Limbaugh and Gingrich's harm the confirmation debate, Cornyn said: "Neither one of these men are elected Republican officials. I just don't think it's appropriate and I certainly don't endorse it. I think it's wrong."

That doesn't mean Conryn will support her. But he thinks the debate should focus on her legal views and her record.