The nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court contiues to test the credibility of America’s political elites. Rachel updates the failing scores at right.

In a country of over 300 million people and only two major political parties, it’s inevitable that even the more rational of the two parties will contain a few, uh,"very silly people." For example, the Democratic Party has "strategists" Lanny Davis and Chris Lehane.

It also follows that if you want to gin up or perpetuate ever more ridiculous and contrived controversies over the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, the folks at Politico can always count on a Davis or Lehane to prove the point.

Sure enough, . . . three, two, one . . ., cue Politico’s capturing Davis/Lehane advice on handling Judge Sotomayor’s reference to the insights of Latinas:

“She misspoke,” said Lanny Davis, a White House lawyer and spokesman for President Bill Clinton. “Every day that goes by that they don’t say she misspoke and she used the wrong words … they just feed it and give it life and give Rush [Limbaugh] and [Sean] Hannity more airtime unnecessarily.”

Said Democratic strategist Chris Lehane: “In this day and age, six or seven or eight weeks is a long time to go without addressing an issue that can potentially take on a life of its own and evolve and grow.”

Lehane then notes these Republican arguments are “probably continuing the long-term self-destruction of the Republican Party,” but he doesn’t explain why he wants to save the GOP from its well-deserved destiny.

Hint to Chris/Lanny: It’s not the White House or Judge Sotomayor who need to apologize. Every day that conservatives and right-wing cable/talk shows insult women and the Hispanic Community with their offensive attacks, and Republicans decline to reject and apologize for those insults, is another nail in the Republican coffin. They can kiss 2010 and 2012 goodbye.

[Update: John Coryn, who can see his job of increasing Republican Senators becoming impossible, calls Gingrich/Limbaugh smears "terrible."

"This is not the kind of tone any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advise and consent.”]

I have a suggestion. Since the GOP needs to broaden its base, but doesn’t want to dilute its intellectual rigor, why don’t we loan Lanny Davis and Chris Lehane to the Republicans? Both parties would benefit from this bipartisan gesture.

More from digby, TPM’s David Kurtz and Glenn Greenwald; also Boehlert, via Atrios.

Breaking: WH says Sotomayor says she made wrong word choice. We are all Republicans now, and Lanny Davis is our Leader. Just shoot me.