Robert Bork has acted as the chief judicial adviser to Mitt Romney’s campaign in both 2008 and 2012. In introducing him in 2007, Romney said, “I wish he were already on the Supreme Court. He’s the kind of brilliant conservative mind that this court could use.” Here’s the video:
If that doesn’t scare the hell out of you, you need to learn more about Robert Bork. His authoritarian views on virtually everything are nothing short of appalling. He believes, for example, that the First Amendment protects only explicitly political speech and not literary, scientific or any other kind of speech. He also dismisses the 9th Amendment as a meaningless “ink blot” on the Constitution, which means that if the Constitution does not explicitly say that you have a right, you don’t have it. His ideas are not just bad, they would spell the end of anything remotely resembling a free society.
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Reginald Selkirk
September 18, 2012 at 1:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Romney has John Bolton advising him on foreign policy. Quality all the way.
criticaldragon1177
September 18, 2012 at 1:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed Brayton,
I don’t really know a lot about Robert Bork, other than what’s I’ve been told by some republicans. I’ve got to some more research.
holytape
September 18, 2012 at 1:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You should meet the rest of his staff.
Bernie Madoff, his economic advisor.
Leona Helmsley, his image consultant.
1969 Chicago Cubs, campaign managers.
tbp1
September 18, 2012 at 2:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Honestly I don’t know how anyone who claims to be a conservative doesn’t run screaming from Bork. He’s the antithesis of everything most of them claim to believe in.
You’d almost think they don’t really mean it when they talk about small government and keeping government out of people’s lives.
dustinarand
September 18, 2012 at 2:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s good that you mention this. I think a lot of people just look at candidates in isolation and say to themselves, “well, Romney seems like a nice guy, moderate by Republican standards, and definitely smart and successful, so maybe I will vote for him.” The problem is that you are not just voting for a candidate. You are voting for an entire political machine that stands behind that candidate, and which will exert a great deal of pressure on his cabinet and judicial appointments.
It’s like what your sex-ed techer taught you (if you were lucky enough to have sex-ed): you’re not just sleeping with so-and-so; you’re sleeping with everyone so-and-so has slept with too. Moderate voters should heed that warning before they vote for a guy who will be forced by the Republican party machine to nominate dangerous ideologues to the Federal bench.
d cwilson
September 18, 2012 at 2:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Robert Bork, John Bolton, Karl Rove.
It’s like Romney has assembled a team of supporters from the absolute worst figures in rightwing politics from the past 30 years.
Alverant
September 18, 2012 at 3:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
#4 because what conservatives claim to believe in and what they actually believe in are two different thing. I’m convinced that the whole “small government and keeping government out of people’s lives” is bullshit. What they really want is a large government that they control to support their agenda, look the other way when it comes to businesses doing bad things, and keeping the people they don’t like oppressed. We’ve seen it in how they have acted since the 50s.
BrianX
September 18, 2012 at 3:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
#6:
And topped it off with a big heaping helping of Scott Walker Jr.
Ellie
September 18, 2012 at 3:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Let’s see…Robert Bork didn’t like any decisions regarding civil rights, he thinks birth control should be outlawed, he thinks women are not discriminated against and therefore, do not need Constitutional protections. He once ruled that a corporation could demand that women be sterilized or lose their jobs. He has an extremely limited view of what the speech section of the First Amendment should cover: not literature, art or science. Yeah…he fits right in with the Teapublican agenda.
Every time he raves about how his grandmother didn’t have time to have a job, I want to shove pictures of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in his face…or up his…whatever orifice is handy.
EricJ
September 18, 2012 at 3:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Kinda fun to watch the train-wreck that is the Romney campaign unfold in slow motion. He can’t go a week without some uber-gaffe or embarrassing video come out.
Rodney Nelson
September 18, 2012 at 3:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Bork claims to be a strict Constitutional constructionist, except for those parts of the Constitution he doesn’t care for, like the 9th Amendment.
Abby Normal
September 18, 2012 at 4:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The man’s name has become synonymous with failed and broken. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy.
raven
September 18, 2012 at 4:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Kevin Hassett, a fake economist and idiot is Romney’s economic advisor. He wrote a book called Dow 36,000 right before the market dropped. It still hasn’t even made it much past 14,000, today 13,550.
Guy isn’t even a quack, just an idiot.
Are we seeing a pattern here? Bork, Bolton, Rove, Hassett, all about the worst in their fields.
I suppose he will dig up the neocons and Rumsfeld as military advisors and the Mormon and Catholic Popes to advise him on family planning issues.
raven
September 18, 2012 at 4:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Bork has all the personal charm of a cobra with its fangs in your arm. He is not a nice guy. Similar to Romney.
baal
September 18, 2012 at 4:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thanks for the urbandictionary link Abby. I’ve been known to use ‘borked’ per defns 1-4 (before the right tried to ‘fix’ the meaning).
Since no one has Godwinned the thread yet, I will. Bork’s legal writings read like he’d be comfortable in natzi Germany or Stalinist USSR. I’m not sure that I am engaging in hyperbole.
Zinc Avenger (Sarcasm Tags 3.0 Compliant)
September 18, 2012 at 5:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well of course Romney supports him. It makes him look like a Troo Conservative and that equals votes from Troo Conservatives. It’s not like Romney is ever going to have to abide by the dark-ages rulings that will ensue, as with enough money you can buy work-arounds for little things like supreme court rulings.
shripathikamath
September 18, 2012 at 8:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Too bad Gregory Peck is not alive. Would have been fun to see his narrative on Bork today
But it is truly an indication of how far the Overton window has moved to the right. Obama is a right of Reagan conservative if you compare their records on taxes, bailouts, spending, war-mongering…
Bork was rejected 42-58 with six Republicans joining all but two Democrats.
Can you imagine six Teapublicans today voting against someone like that?
Modusoperandi
September 18, 2012 at 11:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
To be fair, they do have a pretty cool meeting place.
thisisaturingtest
September 19, 2012 at 9:09 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
#9, Ellie:
I have to admit, 30 or so years ago, I thought the same thing- the theoretical and implied protections already in the Constitution seemed to me to be enough. What’s changed my mind? The discriminatory attitudes, words, and actions of the very people who insist there is no discrimination seem plainly to me to call for more explicit protections.
democommie
September 19, 2012 at 9:32 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Guy isn’t even a quack, just an idiot.”.
I’ll take “Neoconologisms” for $1,000, Alex.
What is an idiuack or quidiot?