RUSH: Now, I am being criticized in the Drive-By Media, ‘He couldn’t even give her a day. I mean, he couldn’t wait. It was not even 90 minutes and Limbaugh is out trying to say these horrible things about Sonia Sotomayor.’ Forty-five minutes after the Reagan administration announced the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, Ted Kennedy took to the floor of the Senate and said this: ‘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. … President Reagan is still our President. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate, and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and on the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice.’
That is about as chock-full of lies, misstatements, that is about as personally insulting and mean as you can get. What was the result of this? Bork didn’t get out of committee. The mean-spirited, evil Democrats, lying through the teeth of Ted Kennedy, 45 minutes after he was nominated, succeeded. They did not pay a price, apparently. So imagine if a Republican — pick your favorite Republican Senator — yesterday had gone to the floor of the Senate 45 minutes after Obama’s announcement of Sonia Sotomayor and said this: ‘Sonia Sotomayor’s America is a land in which the rule of law would be turned into the rule of empathy, where quotas would triumph over merit, rogue bureaucrats could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, free thinkers could 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 and is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy. President Obama is still our president, but he shouldn’t be able to reach out from the muck of Porkulus, from the muck of stimulus, from the muck of TARP, from the muck of $12 trillion in deficits, and impose his reactionary vision, his anti-constitutional vision, on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice.’
Imagine what would be happening today if a Republican Senator had taken to the floor and said that. And that, my rewrite, is mild compared to what Ted Kennedy said about Robert Bork. That was 1987. Do you remember that, Dawn, the Borking of Bork? Dawn doesn’t. So this is the first time you’ve heard what Ted Kennedy said? Okay. Okay. All right. Well, I remember it, of course, at the time. And you know what else I remember about it? I remember, I think 1987 was the year, and that year I was in Sacramento, California. You know what I remember about it? I remember that the Republicans of that day laughed. That’s off the deep end, that’s so over the top, nobody’s going to believe this. The Reagan administration didn’t do much to defend Bork. I remember that. I remember watching, ‘Why is the administration letting this guy dangle in the wind all by himself?’ They didn’t do anything to defend him. I concluded because they didn’t think this was going to happen, Bork, he was a perfect jurist; he was ideal for the Supreme Court. You know what else the left hated about him?
During his hearings he described the job in part as being an intellectual feast. They hated that. I can remember the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee having a cow over that, an intellectual feast. And, of course, they got on him on the Griswold case out of Connecticut, back alley abortions and this sort of stuff. But this had never been done before, this was so over the top, they were laughing about it. And Ted Kennedy’s statement in 1987 has become the blueprint for the way the Democrats react to virtually every Republican president’s Supreme Court nominees, and often cabinet nominees. So somebody tell me, somebody explain this to me, I want to know, I want to know why it is the Democrats never pay a price for being mean-spirited, critical. They can go after black people; they can go after Hispanic people; they can go after white people; they can go after women; they can destroy anybody they want, and somehow it never hurts, and nobody ever says they better be careful.
Republicans who are not opposing Sonia Sotomayor because she’s a woman or because she’s Hispanic are warned, don’t oppose her at all or you’ll pay the price. And now Republicans, okay, we gotta wave the white flag on this, we can’t oppose her. We’ll go extinct if we do. Republican Party is extinct. And if we’re going to throw in the towel on this, we may as well throw in the towel on Obama, ’cause he’s a minority. We’re gonna really make the blacks mad every time we oppose anything he wants to do. So we just better back off and let him have everything he wants. That’s the way to show the people of the country that we love ’em. If everybody’s thinking alike, somebody isn’t thinking.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know what Joe Biden said shortly after Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court? You don’t? Would you like to hear what Joe Biden said about Clarence Thomas shortly after he was confirmed to the US Supreme Court? Joe Biden said, ‘I think the only reason Clarence Thomas is on the court is because he’s black. I don’t believe he coulda won had he been white. The reason is I think it was a cynical ploy by President Bush.’ So here once again, the sitting vice president, back in the early nineties when Clarence Thomas was nominated, goes out and says he’s only been nominated, he’s only on the court ’cause he’s black. He wouldn’t make it if he’s white. Has anybody on our side said that about Sonia Sotomayor? No. Did Biden pay a price for it? No. Does Biden pay a price for any of the stupid things he says and does? ‘No, that’s old Joe, no, he’s got this runaway mouth. He’s kind of fun, fun old guy, old Joe.’ It’s a two-way street, a double standard out there, and there’s no reason the double standard has to exist.
And, by the way, do you remember Julianne Malveaux? Don’t confuse her with Suzanne Malveaux. Suzanne Malveaux is or was an infobabe reporterette at CNN. Julianne Malveaux used to be a participant in a PBS version of the McLaughlin Group. (interruption) Julianne Malveaux runs a college? What college? I don’t really care. Don’t waste your time looking it up. If you knew it off the top of your head, fine and dandy. Julianne Malveaux once said of Clarence Thomas, ‘I hope his wife feeds him a lot of eggs and bacon so he has an early heart attack and dies.’ And the libs laughed about it. Oh, yeah. That was funny. And when she was called on it some years later, she laughed oh, you know, that’s been thrown back in my face, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, gets away with it. So Joe Biden, the only reason Thomas on the court is because he’s white. That’s just a cynical ploy by President Bush, but of course the first female Hispanic on the court, no way that’s cynical by Barack Obama. And, gee, Julianne Malveaux, gee. Another reason she got away with it is she is a black woman, so she can say I hope Clarence Thomas’ wife feeds him a lot of eggs and bacon, high cholesterol, so he has a heart attack and dies.