In the two days since Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul restated his long-held opposition to the portions of 1964’s Civil Rights Act that prohibited racial discrimination by private businesses, members of his party have been keeping their distance and tripping over themselves in the rush to declare their allegiance to the landmark civil rights law.

But, as the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus points out, there was a time not long ago when Republican Senators were faced with someone with views very similar to Paul’s–and, instead of distancing themselves from him, tried to put him on the Supreme Court.

Rand Paul and Robert Bork, Marcus writes, “are ideological soul mates.”
For those whose perspective on the rejected Bork nomination is that it was such a skewed pummeling that it led to the creation of a new verb — Borking — here’s a reminder. Writing in The New Republic in 1963 about the proposed civil rights act, Bork inveighed against a principle of "unsurpassed ugliness” — not of racism, mind you, but of the notion of compelling private property owners to stop discriminating. Sound familiar? The next year, Bork lit into the proposed bans on discrimination in both employment and public accommodations, saying they would “compel association where it is not desired,” and citing “serious constitutional problems” with the measure.

Bork renounced those views publicly in 1973, during his nomination for solicitor general. Paul’s about-face took less than 24 hours.

It might seem unfair to bring up a 23-year-old nomination battle in the debate over today’s policies, but some in the Republican Party have done just that, using Bork’s Senate defeat as a recurring Supreme Court talking point.

Just last week, for instance, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (who voted to confirm Bork in 1987) used the Bork-as-martyr defense to excuse all GOP attacks on Elena Kagan.

This week, McConnell weighed in on the Paul brouhaha, issuing a statement extolling the “landmark achievement” of the Civil Rights Act.

If Republicans want to keep on bringing up the Bork nomination, they should spend some time remembering why Bork met with such an unfriendly reception.

For a reminder, check out People For’s 1987 TV Ad on Bork, narrated by Gregory Peck: