So the opponents needed to find a way to defeat the inertia and pressure to simply rubberstamp the nomination.

Also there's sorta the fiction that the nomination is really about qualifications and that there should be no ideological litmus test, so once faced with a choice that was ideological, opponents had to find reasons that were not ideological.

To my thinking as a center-left kinda guy, Both Bork and Thomas were not center-conservatives. They were right-wingers, conservatives' conservatives. Their choice as nominees was itself an f-u to the center and the left. So of course it was bound to get nasty. The admins should not have put those 2 yahoos up in the first place.

But I suppose that let the partisan dogs loose. Basically the rep strategy was to hold up practically all judicial nominations in hope that some Rep would be able to beat Clinton. My friend Willie Fletcher got held up - no reason, just no vote. Obviously, he was "too liberal" as was said in the press about him. But he's a plain-vanilla liberal, not a real flaming advocate. In a particularly mean-spirited proposal, I believe O. Hatch said the condition of Fletcher's confirmation is that his mother retire.

So now what do we do? The Admin is trying to pack the Supreme Court with conservatives and I think if some of the names being put up in caes Rehnquist steps down go on there, the Sup Ct. will be right of the center of the US. I suppose if Bush nominates a centrist conservative, there goes his support among the "true believers".

We'll see.

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"Knowledge is power, but enthusiasm pulls the switch"
- Ivern Bell