All Borked Up

In the NY Times this morning, Joe Nocera reminds us that today's unprecedented Republican intransigence is all the fault of the Democrats who sent Robert Bork packing nearly a quarter of a century ago.

I bring up Bork not only because Sunday is a convenient anniversary. His nomination battle is also a reminder that our poisoned politics is not just about Republicans behaving badly, as many Democrats and their liberal allies have convinced themselves. Democrats can be — and have been — every bit as obstructionist, mean-spirited and unfair.

I’ll take it one step further. The Bork fight, in some ways, was the beginning of the end of civil discourse in politics. For years afterward, conservatives seethed at the “systematic demonization” of Bork, recalls Clint Bolick, a longtime conservative legal activist. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution coined the angry verb “to bork,” which meant to destroy a nominee by whatever means necessary. When Republicans borked the Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright less than two years later, there wasn’t a trace of remorse, not after what the Democrats had done to Bork. The anger between Democrats and Republicans, the unwillingness to work together, the profound mistrust — the line from Bork to today’s ugly politics is a straight one. 

Needless to say, Steve Benen puts this nonsense to bed.

It’s hard to overstate how remarkably wrong this is. Indeed, nearly every paragraph in Nocera’s piece includes a fairly significant error of fact or judgment.

The columnist argues, for example, that Bork was an intellectual giant who was unfairly labeled as an “extremist.” I suppose it’s a subjective question — an extremist to one is a moderate to another — but I’d note for context that Bork had endorsed Jim Crow-era poll taxes, condemned portions of the Civil Rights Act banning discrimination in public accommodations, and argued against extending the equal protection of the 14th Amendment to American women, among other things. Nocera may be comfortable with Bork’s ability to justify these positions as a matter of legal theory, but considering Bork’s conclusions as “extreme” seems more than fair.

Benen goes on to explain that six Republican senators voted against Bork at the time, and that Democrats happily worked with Reagan and Bush Sr. to pass legislation.  It was when Republicans refused to work with Bill Clinton and indeed impeached him that things really got "contentious" in Washington, a fact Nocera ignores.    You can certainly make the case that the beginning of the end of comity in the Senate was long before Bork, too.

If you're going to blame everything on the Dems, find a better example, Joe.  This one's just terrible.