May 26, 2009: Rove: Supreme Court Nominee May Not be Smart Just Because She Graduated from Princeton and Yale

Former Bush White House political director Karl Rove attacks Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) on the grounds that she is less than intelligent. During a debate with former Clinton political director James Carville, moderator Charlie Rose notes, “She is very smart.” Rove responds, “Not necessarily.” Rose notes that Sotomayor “went to Princeton where she graduat[ed] with honors and then went on to Yale Law School,” to which Rove replies, “I know lots of stupid people who went to Ivy League schools.” Rose points out that Rove himself never graduated from college, and Rove says, “Message to the kids out there—don’t do what I did—I am the last of a generation.” [Huffington Post, 5/26/2009] In an appearance on Fox News, Rove continues denigrating Sotomayor’s intellect, saying that according to former colleagues, she was more like a “schoolmarm” than an intellectual force. Rove says: “What she would do is she would mark them up [legal opinions] like she was your English school teacher and—with your typos and misspellings and other words that she wanted to have changed and send it back to her colleagues. Not exactly the best way to ingratiate yourself with your colleagues. Rather than say, ‘Oh, I thought you had an interesting legal argument here and I’d like to talk to you more about this here,’ she was acting like sort of a schoolmarm.” [Think Progress, 5/27/2009]