gofigure wrote:
Suspect fatigue may have set in after the Alabama Assault on Roe thread.
Can't get PBS Frontline show. Am curious if there was any historical comment wrt contended nominees before the Bork-Kennedy dust up? But yes it does seem to get uglier and uglier with each one. While digging around the wikipedia, found it interesting that because of a difference in salaries, we were spared Orin Hatch bench queries in oral arguments for the last 30 years. As it turned out we got the other Kennedy through an almost unanimous vote.
Am sure Ted is proud to have stopped Bork, but to source him as the root for our current political acrimony might be a stretch.
For the most part the nomination process didn't involve questioning the nominee in committee and definitely not in an adversarial context that Kennedy created for Bork. Frontline is left leaning to left and managed to make Bork, Thomas and Kavanaugh sympathetic figures. (Mitch McConnell comes across as a patient evil genius)
Here's why Teddy is the root.
He opened Pandora's box for super politicizing the process which led to the Thomas nomination brouhaha which pissed off the GOP which made Clinton impeachment possible and then we were off with total warfare on the Potomac