At Townhall, Guy Benson provides an insightful commentary on the recent history of judicial nominations, which sheds light on how we might think about the GOP’s actions in the Senate this week.
Monday marked one of the most partisan days in the history of the United States Senate. As the body’s judiciary committee trudged through the process of voting to advance the nomination of an eminently qualified jurist to the full chamber for consideration, strictly along party lines, reports emerged that Democrats had secured the 41 votes necessary to sustain the first partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee in US history. This unprecedented escalation will almost certainly force Republicans to follow in the footsteps of a previous unprecedented escalation from Democrats, changing the Senate rules to do away with the 60-vote filibuster threshold for all presidential nominees. This partisan denouement represents an inevitable culmination of decades of bare-knuckled one-upsmanship in which Democrats have been the aggressors at nearly every turn. Tracing the current state of play back to one single moment or controversy may be difficult, but many would argue that it began with an astoundingly acerbic and demagogic 1987 floor speech by Sen. Ted Kennedy, who once killed a woman, against President Reagan’s nominee to the High Court, Robert Bork…
A pitched battle ensued, led by liberal Democrats, with Bork ultimately being defeated. During the term of President George H.W. Bush, the Left tried to replicate their character assassination playbook against Clarence Thomas, who was subjected to an extremely nasty and personal confirmation fight. He was eventually confirmed 52-48, the closest margin in more than 100 years. By contrast, President Clinton’s judicial nominees were confirmed at a higher rate than his predecessor’s, and neither of his picks for the Supreme Court faced any serious opposition. Even uber-liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was set to alter the make-up of the Court by replacing a significantly more conservative justice, was approved by an overwhelming 96-3 margin. Even after the ugliness and vitriol of Democrats’ treatment of Bork and Thomas, the GOP did not answer in kind.