Senator John Cornyn is criticizing Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich for labeling Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a “racist.”

(CNN) — A top Senate Republican is taking aim at recent statements from conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich suggesting Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a “racist.”

“I think it’s terrible,” Sen. John Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told NPR’s “All Things Considered” 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.” ...

”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 Wednesday. ”Here you have a racist – you might want to soften that, and you might want to say a reverse racist,“ Limbaugh said the day before on his radio program.

Senate Republicans meanwhile have largely withheld judgment on Sotomayor, though many — including Cornyn — have taken issue with some of her past statements and rulings. ...

The NRSC chief also brushed off the Limbaugh and Gingrich statements while noting neither man holds an elected office. ”Neither one of these men are elected Republican officials. I just don’t think it’s appropriate. I certainly don’t endorse it. I think it’s wrong," he said.