The "larger story," McConnell said, was "the left's never-ending drive to politicize the courts," with the fight over Gorsuch as an "escalation in the left's never-ending judicial war, the most audacious yet, and it cannot, and will not, stand".
Despite the angry denunciations flying back and forth and the fizzing sense of grievance being nursed on both sides, the messy, difficult truth is that both parties can be justified, that all-or-nothing judicial war will bring destruction, and that some sort of face-saving compromise will somehow have to be patched up.
Although Judge Bork was, of course, defeated, in many ways the Bork battle has never really ended, with today's ceaseless judicial confirmation wars being carried on by ideological combatants too young to remember the original.
The confirmation of Mr. Holmes, a Bush nominee who has argued that abortion is akin to the Holocaust and that the Bible requires women to be subservient to men, rekindled judicial nomination wars.
The judicial nomination wars, dormant in recent months, re-emerged Tuesday as the Senate narrowly confirmed one of President Bush's nominees to the bench who has argued that abortion is akin to the Holocaust and that the Bible requires women to be subservient to men.
In the era of judicial-appointment wars, such committees are a way of signalling to the Republican base that the candidate is right on such issues as abortion, and Kmiec's association with Romney was meant to give a pro-life seal of approval to a candidate who was once pro-choice.
No state legislator or executive or judicial officer can war against the Constitution without violating his undertaking to support it.
As a result, only the people in the courthouse got to see the stirring scenes of judicial tug-of-war that harked back to the Scopes trial.
In a judicial tug-of-war, the school lost the case, went to a higher court and got a court order preserving the parking.
A match between Matt Lindland and Keith Sieracki took only minutes at the Olympic trials in June, but two months later, the outcome remains locked in a judicial tug of war between federal arbitrators and federal judges.
