Serious question DUers

[malaise]

Has any political party in the US ever nominated an out and out political operative before Kavanaugh?
Has any SCOTUS appointment ever been this dishonest and partisan? I know Merrick Garland never got a hearing.

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Wouldnt have to ask the question if there had been wall to wall

support of our candidate.

[kozar]

2. I'll jump in first malaise,

In my almost 60 years on this world, here is my thought. First, ,I have seen a number of SC nominees in my day,, IMHO they were all partisan,,except for this. It was different then than now,, RWNJ's are brave,brazen, unafraid, right now. So to answer your question,,nope Ive never seen anything like Garland,Gousch, Kavanaugh,, but my experience in life means nothing to todays games.

Koz

[malaise]

3. Same here

I can't believe what we're witnessing here

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. Maybe Rehnquist, to some extent.

He worked for both Goldwater and Nixon, and was associated with AG John Mitchell.

....He began his legal work in the firm of Denison Kitchel, subsequently the national campaign manager of the Barry M. Goldwater presidential campaign in 1964. .... Rehnquist was active in the Republican Party and served as a legal advisor under Kitchel to Goldwater's campaign. He collaborated with Harry Jaffa on Goldwater's speeches.

Many years later, during the 1971 hearing for associate justice and later during the 1986 Senate hearings on his chief justice nomination, several people came forward to complain about Rehnquist's participation in Operation Eagle Eye, a Republican attempt to discourage minority voters in Arizona elections, when Rehnquist served as a poll watcher in the early 1960s....

When President Richard Nixon was elected in 1968, Rehnquist returned to work in Washington. He served as Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel, from 1969 to 1971. In this role, he served as the chief lawyer to Attorney General John Mitchell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rehnquist

On the Supreme Court his decisions were consistently on the extreme right. I remember that when a decision was announced and that Rehnquist wrote it, I'd know who won before I even read it. Kavanaugh seems to be cut from the same cloth - started out as a partisan WH operative, appointed to the court to keep that agenda going. Rehnquist recused himself from the Watergate tapes case because he'd served in the Nixon administration. K. probably won't.

[Kaleva]

5. Justice Stephen Johnson Field may be the worst of all time

"As a sitting justice in 1880, Justice Stephen Johnson Field launched a dark horse bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Claiming that “the chilling shadow of the empire” was descending upon the United States, Field fronted an anti-government campaign that would make all but the most strident modern day tea partiers blush. “The old Constitution,” Field’s campaign warned in a pamphlet that traced America’s original sin at least as far back as the John Adams administration, “has been buried under the liberal interpretations of Federalist-Republican Congresses and administrations, grasping doubtful powers and making each step towards centralization the sure precedent of another.” At a time when memories of Reconstruction still burned hot in the minds of Southern white supremacists, Field’s campaign argued that he was “the proper candidate of the party whose life-giving principle is that of local self-government.”"

https://thinkprogress.org/the-five-worst-supreme-court-justices-in-american-history-ranked-f725000b59e8/

[HopeAgain]

6. Robert Bork

He wasn't an operative per se, but he did try to shield Nixon from Watergate. His nomination failed, however. I think the Senate had a Democratic majority at the time. I don't remember.

[lapfog_1]

7. bork was a complete repuke POS

he fired Cox...

"Nixon then ordered the Solicitor General of the United States, Robert Bork, as acting head of the Justice Department, to fire Cox. Both Richardson and Ruckelshaus had given personal assurances to Congressional oversight committees that they would not interfere, but Bork had not."