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Nobody Stood Up for Judge Bork

by Rush Limbaugh - Jul 3,2018

RUSH: Here is Bill in San Diego. You’re next, sir. Great to have you with us. What’s up?

CALLER: Hey, Rush! I just wanted to say, I really enjoy the news and watching Trump take issues and exposing the Democrats. I’m waiting for him to now talk about the Democrats and the Democratic Party War on Women and how they’re attacking all the women that are successful and people he’s promoting. He is gonna stand up for them and keep promoting them, and he’s gonna always back the women in government, and he doesn’t understand why the Democrats are so threatened by them.

RUSH: Well, I think that’s… You know, you have an actual very perceptive observation there. Trump fights back at every attack they make. And if he nominates a woman, we can pretty much predict what’s gonna happen. If he nominates… Say it’s Amy Barrett. They’re gonna go after her in predictable ways. That’s the thing. The left is eminently predictable. The left does not surprise you. They don’t surprise us anymore, right, folks? We’ve seen it. We know what had to happen.

What has always frustrated us is that, even knowing that, our side never had a strategery to deal with it! Our side always did seem surprised. You and I aren’t. Well, Trump has a strategy of dealing with it — and, if they go after his nominee, he’s gonna defend her. You know, I have to remind you of something. The Bork nomination in 1987 or whatever. I know it was before this show… I know it was in the late eighties, and it was before this program started.

The Clarence Thomas nomination was the nomination that I spent, I mean, tremendous amounts of time on trying to expose the Democrats and their effort there. But when Bork was nominated, even at the time, I was struck by how little defense of him there was from people in the Reagan administration. It’s kind of an illustration of how things have changed, because the standard rule of thumb back then was that you didn’t respond to this stuff, that it was the confirmation process — and they were scholarly. (impression) “The confirmation process was constitutional. It was very important. It was very buttoned down and reserved and it was proper.”

Well, Ted Kennedy blew all that out of water with his defamation rant on the Senate floor about Bork. Ted Kennedy forever changed the entire scope of Supreme Court and federal court judicial nominations. Forever changed them. But even back then, as competent as the Reagan political people were — and Reagan had some of the best political people at the time in the business. But nobody knew what to do. Nobody knew how to deal with this. So Bork pretty much was left to fend for himself — ’cause many people thought, by the way, that he could. Brilliant guy. He likes debate. He loves mixing it up with these guys.

So they left Bork alone.

I’m telling you, in ’87, I am 36 years old. And I’m watching this, and I’m flabbergasted by how Bork is just being allowed to swim alone out there in the deep water. And there wasn’t a life raft, there wasn’t a rescue boat, there was nothing. And I thought this doesn’t make sense. They’re letting this guy — and it’s obvious he was gonna go down in flames.

They went after him on — I’ll never forget one answer that Bork gave to a question that just blew up Washington, just blew ’em up. The media and the Democrats could not get over this. I don’t remember the specific question, but it had to do with how Bork viewed the job of being a Supreme Court justice.

And his answer was — and I’m sure that Bork — and I got to know him quite well after all of this. After this program started, our paths crossed a number of times. I ended up hosting a couple of roundtable discussions nationwide where he was a guest. And it was obvious that his perception of the job and his perception of what those in the Senate were looking for was at odds.

I wish I could remember the specific question, but Bork’s answer was, “Senator, this couldn’t be any better. This entire position will be an intellectual feast.” And the town blew up because they thought Bork was describing something esoteric, nonspecific, that he looked at the job as all about him and how much fun it was gonna be to give his brain a workout every day rather than sitting there and judge actual cases.

And that’s not what Bork meant. But it was taken, it was widely misinterpreted, misunderstood to indicate that Bork had a huge vanity problem, that he was arrogant and condescending, and that he didn’t have respect for the senators who were conducting the confirmation hearings. And that coupled with Ted Kennedy and the fact that there was no defense from the Reagan administration, I mean, very little, Bork went down in flames.

There was a privacy case that Bork got too in the weeds on. All he would have to say, “I fully expect the right to privacy.” Bork got into “There is no right to privacy in the Constitution, senator.” And of course there isn’t. It’s implied in the Fourth Amendment, but it’s not stated. A direct right to privacy is not stated. Yet everybody thinks they have one. So Bork got in the weeds with them on that. And this was about a contraception case in Connecticut. And it wasn’t long before it was over.

And then Ginsburg was nominated to replace him and it was learned that he had smoked a little doobie, like the weed, he was gone, and that’s how we ended up with Justice Kennedy. Well, now it’s all different. Now they’re gonna go after any Trump nominee — they tried going after Gorsuch, but Schumer blundered big time on Gorsuch by pulling the nuclear option. He should have realized that Gorsuch was gonna get confirmed, that Gorsuch didn’t change the balance of power, quote, unquote.

But they were flexing their muscles, the Democrats were, and they wanted to try to stop Gorsuch just to thwart Trump. And now Schumer has shot a lot of his ammo, and he doesn’t have it to use anymore. So they’re gonna try character assassination. But the big equalizer is gonna be Trump! Trump is gonna defend his nominee. Trump is gonna be attacking the people that attack whoever the nominee is.

And the caller is right. If he nominates the Amy Barrett or any other woman and these people, Chuck Schumer and the left and all these advocacy groups, if they go after her, you can count on the fact that Trump is gonna be pointing out on Twitter and everywhere he can what a bunch of hypocrites and worse these people are.

Because if it’s Amy Barrett, she checks off every box that feminists have claimed women should be. Every box. She’s accomplished more than most people ever will in their lives and has seven kids. That blows their minds.


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