You forgot Bork.
They got Gregory Peck to act in commercials warning voters that Bork would over-rule the 14th Amendment and reimpose slavery. What they did to Thomas was childs play in comparison. Thomas got the appointment, Bork was rejected.
Bork had made the mistake of articulating his judicial philosophy before he was appointed.
Exactly right. Anthony Kennedy had a less "controversial" written record. After that the Bork hearings cast a long shadow on all future SCOTUS vacancies, and "Bork" became a verb.
I had a "moderate" friend (pro-choice etc.) but he respected Bork, bought his book The Tempting of America, and kept reading passages to me.
I think Bork would have been a better justice than Kennedy, but leftists do count the votes, and if Bork had been confirmed, I think 3 years later Thomas would have faced even fiercer attacks from the left. Bork was nominated to replace the "moderate" Powell, while Thomas was to replace the ideologically opposite Thurgood Marshall (why did he retire when GHWB was POTUS?). Marshall, whose clerks included Kagan and Cass Sunstein, made a remarkably Obama-like statement at the bicentennial celebration of the Constitution in 1987:
...the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and major social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and individual rights, we hold as fundamental today
I forgot Bork.....he was a brilliant man to boot