President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has put the Republican Party in a bind, as it weighs the cost of aggressively opposing Mr. Obama’s attempt to put the first Hispanic on the high court at a time when the party has struggled with sharp setbacks in its effort to appeal to Hispanic voters.

The Republican Party has been embroiled in a public argument over whether to tend to the ideological interests of its conservative base or to expand its appeal to a wider variety of voters in order to regain its strength following the defeats of 2008. Many conservatives came out fiercely against Ms. Sotomayor as soon her name was announced, denouncing her as liberal and promising Mr. Obama a tough nomination fight.

“The G.O. P. has to make a stand,” said Scott Reed, manager of the 1996 presidential campaign of Bob Dole. “This is what the base and social conservatives really care about, and we need to brand her a liberal with some out-of-the-mainstream positions. Forget about cosmetics and ethnic heritage, and focus on her record.”

But some Republicans warned that the image of Republicans throwing a roadblock before an historic nomination could prove politically devastating. Republicans saw a dip in Hispanic support in 2008, after eight years in which former President George W. Bush and his political aides had made a concerted effort to increase the Republican appeal to Hispanics, the nation’s fastest-growing group of voters.



“If Republicans make a big deal of opposing Sotomayor, we will be hurling ourselves off a cliff,” said Mark McKinnon, a senior adviser to Mr. Bush and a long-time advocate of expanding the party’s appeal. “Death will not be assured. But major injury will be.”

Matthew Dowd, another one-time adviser to Mr. Bush, said that in 2000, he calculated that Republicans needed to win 35 percent of Hispanics to beat Democrats. He said that given the steady increase in the number of Hispanic voters, he now believed Republicans needed to win a minimum of 40 percent to be competitive with Democrats.

As a result, he said, barring any revelation about Ms. Sotomayor’s background, Republicans could doom themselves to long-term minority status if they are perceived as preventing Ms. Sotomayor from becoming a judge. He argued that the party could not even be seen as threatening a filibuster.

“Because you’ll have a bunch of white males who lead the Judiciary Committee leading the charge taking on an Hispanic women and everybody from this day forward is going to know she’s totally qualified,” he said. “It’s a bad visual. It’s bad symbolism for the Republicans.”

“Republicans have to tread very lightly,” he said. “They can’t look they are going after her in any kind of personal or mean way. There’s no way they can even threaten a filibuster; I think a threat of that sort would be a problem, even if they didn’t do it.”

The conflicting pressures became clear throughout the day as conservative groups came out against Ms. Sotomayor. From the start, conservative leaders have made clear that they viewed the prospect of an ideologically charged nomination fight as a way to revive a movement that is lagging in spirits and funds.

“Judge Sotomayor is a liberal activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written,” said Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, a conservative group that has been preparing for this battle.

Whatever their differences with the nominee herself, Republicans throughout the day offered support, albeit grudging support, to Mr. Obama’s political instincts displayed with the nomination. “Obama has demonstrated a deft political touch with this pick” said Phil Musser, a Republican consultant. “Republicans who pick a fight with an up-from-the-bootstraps Hispanic woman do so at their own peril, and should only do so for a very, very good reason.”

Mr. Bush, who is from Texas, pushed hard from the moment he ran for president in 2000 to appeal to Hispanic voters, and with considerable success. His aides argued that given the increasing size of that segment of the electorate, building support among Hispanics was a crucial part of trying to achieve dominance over Democrats. But the Republican effort suffered a sharp setback when Republicans, over the objections of Mr. Bush, pressed to severely restrict immigration.

The party’s 2008 presidential candidate, Senator John McCain of Arizona, had long been a proponent of easing immigration restrictions, and almost lost his party’s nomination because of that. In the end, he received 31 percent of the Hispanic vote, according to a survey of voters leaving the polls. By contrast, four years earlier, Mr. Bush won 43 percent of the Hispanic vote.

Mr. Dowd said the party’s first risk would be in national elections. But he said it could trickle down into the states as well – particularly in places like Texas, which has a big Hispanic vote. If Hispanics begin turning toward Democrats, he said, Texas – now a reliably Republican state – could quickly turn into a swing state.

“If they don’t get back to a place where they are getting roughly 40 percent net of the Hispanic vote, there is no way they can ever win,” he said.

Socially conservative Hispanic Christians, a pivotal group that Republicans have tried with mixed success to woo, warned that the party’s effort could be set back if conservatives attacked her.

“As a conservative, it could be worse,” said the Rev. Luis Cortes Jr., who as president of the national Hispanic Christian group Esperanza USA was personally courted by President George W. Bush and has since appeared at the Obama White House. “And as Latino, it can’t be better.”

John Harwood and David Kirkpatrick contributed to this post.