Amid all the hoopla over some conservatives calling Sonia Sotomayor a "racist," one prominent Republican is calling for calm in the face of a storm.

"I think it’s terrible," Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told National Public Radio Thursday. "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.”

He added: "Neither one of these men are elected public officials. I just don’t think it’s appropriate and I certainly don’t endorse it — I think it’s wrong."

High-profile figures like Rush Limbaugh and former House Republican Leader Newt Gingrich have said President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court is "racist" because of a 2001 remark she made during a speech at Berkeley, in which she said: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life."

Some conservatives have claimed that had a white man said something to that effect of another ethnic background, his nomination would have no hope for confirmation. "Imagine a judicial nominee said ‘my experience as a white man makes me better than a latina woman.’ new racism is no better than old racism," Gingrich wrote on Twitter.

Former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-CO, told CNN Thursday that senators also have to look at the organizations Sotomayor is involved in, including the National Council of La Raza, which he called "a Latin KKK without the hoods or the nooses," adding that the group’s motto is "all for the race, nothing for the rest." La Raza didn’t take too kindly to those remarks, but it is fair to scrutinize organizations a nominee has belonged to. Justice Samuel Alito, for example, was certainly grilled by the Senate for his involvement with the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, which published a magazine in which students wrote nostalgically about the days before coeducation.

All this attention to Sotomayor’s "Latina" comment may bring more attention to a 1980s case she was linked to. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund sued the New York City Police Department, claiming that its promotion exams discriminated against blacks and Latinos; the group has brought similar cases in other states. Sotomayor sat on the defense fund’s board of directors. This could provide more fuel for Republicans who are concerned that she lets her heritage or own personal background seep too much into her legal decisions.

From The New York Times:

Ms. Sotomayor’s involvement with the defense fund has so far received scant attention. But her critics, including some Republican senators who will vote on her nomination, have questioned whether she has let her ethnicity, life experiences and public advocacy creep into her decisions as a judge. It seems inevitable, then, that her tenure with the defense fund will be scrutinized during her confirmation hearings.

Do you think there’s a double standard at play with what Sotomayor said? Would it be different had a white male said such a thing about a Latina woman, for example? And are Republicans right to be concerned about this?