The Borking Of Republicans

Regarding "Bork nomination altered judicial selection" (Thursday Page A4, Nation), Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan in 1987 was a watershed moment for Democrats, as they realized that they could demagogue their opposition without restraint and without consequence. As the article documents, Teddy Kennedy set the standard when he infamously proclaimed that “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, [and] writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the government......".
 

The reaction of the Media was largely to report the demagoguery as fact. The reaction of Republicans was to squawk for a minute or two, then give up. The result has been a quarter century of a Democrat Party unrestrained by decency or decorum.

 

For one recent illustration, Democrats waited not a minute after the Sandy Hook massacre to politicize the tragedy and demonize anybody who protested their incoherent demands for more gun control. For another, in a speech about the fiscal cliff on Wednesday, President Obama conflated the Sandy Hook massacre and the Fiscal Cliff negotiations, insisting that Republicans' should gain some "perspective" from the tragedy and concede to his agenda on tax increases, as well as "focus on issues like energy and immigration reform".

 

Both incidents were shameful, but inexplicably, our major media outlets generally passed them on without comment, as they have in hundreds of other instances since Bork was vilified in 1987. If we want to understand the "lack of bipartisanship" that the pundits squawk about constantly, unrestrained Democrat calumny is as good a place to start as any.