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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Open Thread: “The Wrong Turning Point”

Open Thread: “The Wrong Turning Point”

by Anne Laurie|  October 24, 201110:04 am| 42 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Both Sides Do It!

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Steven Benen at the Washington Monthly smacks around Joe Nocera‘s uncharacteristically silly defense of Robert Bork:

… Nocera’s larger point, in fact, is that mean ol’ liberals are largely responsible for the toxicity and breakdowns in Washington. “The next time a liberal asks why Republicans are so intransigent,” the columnist concludes, “you might suggest that the answer lies in the mirror.”
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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.
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Indeed, as recently as last week, Bork was still arguing that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to women…
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There have been plenty of modern turning points that have created the breakdowns of our political system. The Gingrich Revolution and the far-right takeover of the Republican Party seems like the big one to me, as do the unjustified impeachment of a Democratic president, the dubious legitimacy of the 2000 presidential election, the Bush White House’s post-9/11 strategy of dividing the country for GOP gain, the Republicans’ scorched-earth strategy of the Obama era, etc.
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But the bipartisan opposition to Bork is the real culprit? Please.

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Reader Interactions

42Comments

  1. 1.

    mikej

    October 24, 2011 at 10:11 am

    Democrats actually voted on the question. Republicans didn’t like the outcome, but at least there was a vote.

  2. 2.

    eyelessgame

    October 24, 2011 at 10:12 am

    It might well be worth it, though, to consider whether this is the case in the minds of Republicans. Do they believe two decades of damage to the Republic is a justified response to failure to have a justice with out-of-mainstream views confirmed?

    I think it’s a marvelous thesis, if it’s what they’re claiming. It makes them look incredibly petty, vindictive, and, well, treasonous. Shout this from rooftops.

  3. 3.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    October 24, 2011 at 10:13 am

    Tonight I guess I need to read Bork’s wikipedia entry and figure out what the hearing was completely about.

  4. 4.

    Unsympathetic

    October 24, 2011 at 10:14 am

    I like how 100% of the online comments slap Nocera down as well. Usually there’s someone posting “Attaboy, Joe!” — not this time.

  5. 5.

    soonergrunt

    October 24, 2011 at 10:14 am

    That’s the important thing to remember–Bork got one of those famous “up or down votes”.
    And he was voted down, 58-42. Two Democrats voted for him, and six Republicans voted against him.

  6. 6.

    Xboxershorts

    October 24, 2011 at 10:18 am

    Nocera’s revisionist history (More Republican revisionism I should say) is total delusional crap.

    I saw the very well justified Nixon impeachment as the point when establishment Republicans went all “wingnut gonna frag yer ass” towards Democrats.

  7. 7.

    beltane

    October 24, 2011 at 10:18 am

    According to the rules of the Village, any principled opposition to right-wing excesses is a form of extremism. The proper role of liberals is to submit, obey, and STFU.

  8. 8.

    Xenos

    October 24, 2011 at 10:21 am

    @Xboxershorts: You remember the Nixon Impeachment? I am impressed with your powers of memory, but not in a good way.

  9. 9.

    drkrick

    October 24, 2011 at 10:27 am

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent): Not necessarily a bad place to start, but like Michele Bachmann’s (or Paul Revere’s), that would be a prime example of an entry likely to have been wikibombed to death by various partisans to the point of limited reliability.

  10. 10.

    Geeno

    October 24, 2011 at 10:30 am

    @Xenos: I’m willing to let that slide. Articles of Impeachment had already been drawn up; it was pretty much a done deal. If he hadn’t resigned, he probably would’ve been impeached just a few days later.
    It was republican senators telling him that they would vote to convict if the impeachment came to them that convinced him to resign.

  11. 11.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    October 24, 2011 at 10:36 am

    @Xboxershorts:

    I saw the very well justified Nixon impeachment as the point when establishment Republicans went all “wingnut gonna frag yer ass” towards Democrats.

    Can’t say I agree with this. The real damage was done when folks like Cheney derived what they thought were the appropriate lessons from Watergate (always stonewall, never give an inch, never back down, fuck the Constitution) and applied them at a much later date. But sad to say, today I’d be willing to give up a non-vital organ if we could have back the GOP party leadership we had in 1973, swapped for the current batch of seditious neo-Confederate political terrorists.

    If I had to pick a real turning point it would be Iran-Contra hearings, when the Dems rev’d up the well oiled Washington scandal machinery which had worked so well before but then Oliver North, et. al. told them to go shove it, and it worked. After the political lessions of that sank in, the descent of the GOP into nihlism was all greased up and ready to go.

  12. 12.

    Immanentize

    October 24, 2011 at 10:38 am

    Just another point about that op ed. The ‘lesson’ that Republicans (and teh whole reading public!) are supposed to take is that two (or twenty zillion and two) wrongs still do not make a right. Nocera points out that the Republicans soon took out then-speaker Jim Wright (over a friggin book deal for God’s sake — how quaint). But did that stop anything? No! They still have the right to do any shit that is bull shit because of Bork.

    I think the real reason he wrote this article is because his so-called “24th anniversary” of the Bork moment is actually the 20th anniversary of the Anita Hill moment.

  13. 13.

    Cacti

    October 24, 2011 at 10:42 am

    Mr. President, I oppose the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, and I urge the Senate to reject it.

    In the Watergate scandal of 1973, two distinguished Republicans — Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus — put integrity and the Constitution ahead of loyalty to a corrupt President. They refused to do Richard Nixon’s dirty work, and they refused to obey his order to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. The deed devolved on Solicitor General Robert Bork, who executed the unconscionable assignment that has become one of the darkest chapters for the rule of law in American history.

    That act — later ruled illegal by a Federal court — is sufficient, by itself, to disqualify Mr. Bork from this new position to which he has been nominated. The man who fired Archibald Cox does not deserve to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States.

    Mr. Bork should also be rejected by the Senate because he stands for an extremist view of the Constitution and the role of the Supreme Court that would have placed him outside the mainstream of American constitutional jurisprudence in the 1960s, let alone the 1980s. He opposed the Public Accommodations Civil Rights Act of 1964. He opposed the one-man one-vote decision of the Supreme Court the same year. He has said that the First Amendment applies only to political speech, not literature or works of art or scientific expression.

    Under the twin pressures of academic rejection and the prospect of Senate rejection, Mr. Bork subsequently retracted the most neanderthal of these views on civil rights and the first amendment. But his mind-set is no less ominous today.

    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, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.

    Now, which part of Ted Kennedy’s speech was untrue about Robert Bork?

    If Robert Bork sat on SCOTUS today, he would be significantly to the right of Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, or Alito.

    Bork was by far the biggest partisan hack ever offered up for a Supreme Court nomination, and it was a reward for being a quisling for the criminality of Richard Nixon.

  14. 14.

    Paul in KY

    October 24, 2011 at 10:47 am

    Thank God that POS didn’t get on the court. Nocera is a servile lackey.

  15. 15.

    Linda Featheringill

    October 24, 2011 at 10:50 am

    I actually remember Robert Bork and the televised questioning of him by the Senate.

    IIRC, not only was he very right wing, he had the social skills of Oscar the Grouch. At that time, I thought he resented having to answer all those questions.

  16. 16.

    The Moar You Know

    October 24, 2011 at 10:51 am

    In a just and decent society, Robert Bork would be in prison or begging for booze money on the streets.

    And here we are.

  17. 17.

    The Moar You Know

    October 24, 2011 at 10:57 am

    @Cacti: This struck me:

    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, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.

    We have all that now save for the officially segregated lunch counters.

    IIRC, not only was he very right wing, he had the social skills of Oscar the Grouch. At that time, I thought he resented having to answer all those questions.

    @Linda Featheringill: His arrogance was monstrous. Sad to say, it wasn’t his views that torpedoed his nomination in the end, it was his “I don’t see why I should have to answer these fucking questions from these dipshit senators” attitude that really did it.

  18. 18.

    Judas Escargot

    October 24, 2011 at 10:58 am

    I’ve never understood how Bork’s assertion that “there is no right to privacy” is supposed to square with his originalist position on the Constitution. The Founders certainly didn’t think of themselves as the property of the State.

    That said, why are pundits even still talking about Bork?

  19. 19.

    geg6

    October 24, 2011 at 11:01 am

    @Cacti:

    This.

  20. 20.

    justawriter

    October 24, 2011 at 11:04 am

    I listened to Bork once speaking at the National Press Club broadcast on NPR. I never got the whole “genius” thing because the man’s arguments could have been dismantled by a brain damaged legal secretary. The topic was free speech (prayer and porn, no other speech seems to exist) and his position was that government promotion of religion could be mandated when he agreed and private speech could be outlawed when he disagreed with it. He never would have lasted past the opening credits of The Paper Chase.

  21. 21.

    Cacti

    October 24, 2011 at 11:11 am

    @The Moar You Know:

    His arrogance was monstrous. Sad to say, it wasn’t his views that torpedoed his nomination in the end, it was his “I don’t see why I should have to answer these fucking questions from these dipshit senators” attitude that really did it.

    We can all be grateful that he had the demeanor and sense of entitlement of a 15th century Cardinal.

  22. 22.

    jayjaybear

    October 24, 2011 at 11:19 am

    @Cacti: Not to mention the political view of one.

  23. 23.

    sukabi

    October 24, 2011 at 11:21 am

    here’s the thing, if you share the same views as someone labeled -xxx, then the likelihood that you’ll identify yourself as -xxx is extremely slim… so Nocera having found a like traveler in Bork will defend him to his last breath, because he is in fact trying to defend and justify his own repugnant ideas.

  24. 24.

    r€nato

    October 24, 2011 at 11:26 am

    Nocera reminds me of a bully who blames his victim: “I wouldn’t have had to beat your ass if you’d have just handed over your lunch money quietly. You brought this on yourself.”

  25. 25.

    The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik

    October 24, 2011 at 11:30 am

    @Unsympathetic:

    Are you talking comments on Benen’s post, or on Joe’s? Because the original Op-Ed’s comments are at least 40-50% cheerleading and/or concern trolling. Which I find wholly depressing but not at all unusual.

  26. 26.

    r€nato

    October 24, 2011 at 11:33 am

    if you ask me, it all started with Goldwater and especially Nixon. That’s when the GOP began practicing the politics of resentment, and it’s just snowballed since then to the point that the GOP has a television propaganda network which openly and proudly mines the rich vein of resentment and petty grudges on a daily basis.

  27. 27.

    The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik

    October 24, 2011 at 11:43 am

    @r€nato:

    But that doesn’t play well, because you can’t paint it with a ‘both sides same thing’ brush. So duh, it can’t have been Goldwater. It must’ve been LBJ with the Daisy ad instead. There, liberals are at fault so now we can proclaim that they have no right to say anything as GOP politically ratfucks them and the media tut tuts Dems for daring say anything.

    I swear, the gravestone of this country will be engraved with ‘Both Sides, Same Thing’.

  28. 28.

    WereBear (itouch)

    October 24, 2011 at 11:46 am

    @Xboxershorts: I saw the very well justified Nixon impeachment as the point when establishment Republicans went all “wingnut gonna frag yer ass” towards Democrats.

    Actually, they often cite that. Except…

    Right now I’m reading David Halberstam’s last book, The Coldest Winter, about the Korean War. The Republicans are certain we “lost China” because of Democratic “squishiness” and they plot to make up crap to fling so they can come out of the wilderness the voters put them in after they caused the Great Depression. This is after Roosevelt won WWII after they didn’t want to fight it at all.

    This is 1950. What has changed?

  29. 29.

    JR

    October 24, 2011 at 11:59 am

    I see… Because 24 years ago Democrats voted against a Supreme Court nominee, Republicans are now perfectly justified to bring legislating to a standstill by not allowing any votes in the Senate.

    It may also explain why many Republicans won’t accept Obama as a legitimate president; I’m not sure how and don’t ask me to explain it, but not elevating a reactionary judge to the Supreme court a generation ago may explain everything about the modern Republican — at least according to Nocera.

    Thank you NYT for contributing so much to the intellectual life of the nation!

  30. 30.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    October 24, 2011 at 12:28 pm

    @WereBear (itouch):

    This is 1950. What has changed?

    What has changed since 1950 is that back then the GOP threw raw meat like that to the rubes in order to get elected, but once in office ruled on the right hand side but within the frame of the Overton Window of that era about how the country should actually be run, which was derived from our success during WW2 in using top-down technocratic management by the govt to get big things done and done quickly, and a post-war consensus that Keynesian ecomonics worked and had replaced the pre-war economic orthodoxy based on balanced budgets, sound money, etc (which even FDR campaigned on the basis of in the fall of 1932, promising that he would do a better job of balancing the budget by cutting federal spending than would Hoover). Hence the creation of the interstate highway system and the other massive infrastructure projects of that era, and Eisenhower’s comments about how nobody of any consequence wanted to dismantle Social Security. It was an era of big govt ideology because big govt worked, it fixed things and solved problems, and did so in a way that was obvious to average Americans, and even mainstream Republican leaders thought about problems in big govt terms.

    Look what happened to Joe McCarthy. He was a GOP golden boy until he slipped his leash and went after the Army. So they put him down like a rabid dog. Today the rabid dogs have slipped their leashes and the GOP doesn’t have it in them to do the responsible thing for the benefit of the nation as a whole.

  31. 31.

    WereBear (itouch)

    October 24, 2011 at 12:38 pm

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: How did it become “no consequences” acting rabid once in office?

    I think once Fox was there telling people what to think, repeated by the rest of the outlets, enough people accepted that way f thinking, because it’s stuff they don’t understand in the first place.

  32. 32.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    October 24, 2011 at 1:02 pm

    @WereBear (itouch):

    How did it become “no consequences” acting rabid once in office?

    That’s sort of the Big Question of our era. How the fuck did we go from 1950 to 1850 more or less in a single generation, in terms of doing (or at least having good intentions in that direction) what’s best for the nation? My best guess answer (and I’ve seen other commentors here chime in with similar opinions) is that the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of anything like a viable and threatening anti-Capitalist ideology is what really did the damage. The timing feels about right in terms our descent into madness, it feels like sometime around the early to mid 1990s (i.e. post-1991) was when the powers that be in the GOP cried “Havoc!” and let slip the Dogs of Stupid.

  33. 33.

    JWL

    October 24, 2011 at 1:03 pm

    Nocera certainly is mistaken.

    Everyone knows our polity was first poisoned by the rejections of Carswell and Haynesworth.

    And, of course, by the democrats refusal to impeach William Douglas.

  34. 34.

    Karmakin

    October 24, 2011 at 1:40 pm

    According to David Brooks’ Blinded By the Right, the whole thing started because the anti-communist lobby needed a new gig after fall of the USSR.

  35. 35.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    October 24, 2011 at 1:59 pm

    @Karmakin:
    I think you meant David Brock. If David Brooks ever writes a book admiting that he was conned, hoodwinked, hornswaggled and otherwise used like a cheap tool by the Right, it will be a sure sign that the Seventh Seal has been broken and the end is nigh.

  36. 36.

    Ruckus

    October 24, 2011 at 2:58 pm

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
    McCarthy was the catalyst for the current day right. He wasn’t the first rabid conservadog but TV gave him a spotlight, good or bad. And the MIC/conservatives had to sell the red menace because otherwise they would have ceased to exist, at least in anything like their then current form.
    And it worked. And it got way out of hand. So now we have the illogical extension of that, the current conservative/business/religious/warfare political party. And everyone else. The party of greed and the party of empathy. The line between them is not crystal clear and sharp but is there.

  37. 37.

    chrome agnomen

    October 24, 2011 at 4:40 pm

    @Xenos:

    you had to be there. and of draft age.

    i had a discussion with a wingnut recently who opined that he wished clinton had actually been impeached. jaw hanger. he thought sure that meant immediate removal from office.

  38. 38.

    chrome agnomen

    October 24, 2011 at 4:43 pm

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:

    not me. i’d like the leadership the right had around lincoln’s time. maybe.

  39. 39.

    El Cid

    October 24, 2011 at 5:42 pm

    @Cacti: I can’t look it up right now, but at one time I think I had read that Bork thought that the 1st Amendment only provided for free speech within Congress and only during Congressional debate.

  40. 40.

    (another) Josh

    October 24, 2011 at 7:03 pm

    What turned my parents’ conservative friends against Bork was his opposition to Griswold: “He wants to outlaw sex,” one of them complained. Renata Adler takes credit for having exposed that position of his with her New Yorker reporting: evidently, Bork wrote something to the effect that if a community had the right to regulate polluters, then it had the right to ban contraceptives, because “the two cases are the same.”

  41. 41.

    chrome agnomen

    October 24, 2011 at 8:11 pm

    just an earlier example of moving the window to the right. after rejecting bork, the left was afraid to reject the almost equally malignant clarence thomas.

  42. 42.

    pkdz

    October 24, 2011 at 9:24 pm

    The Clarence Thomas debacle still lingers, of course. David Brock is still apologizing and is now doing good work at Media Matters. Andrew Breitbart claims he was a liberal until Anita Hill…

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