And before Reagan there was Johnson and Abe Fortas
Hank Greely explains the fate of Abe Fortas: "Fortas had been one of the key lawyers who preserved "Landslide Lyndon's" 87 vote victory in his 1948 race for the US Senate. Johnson used him as a trusted adviser thereafter, successfully nominating for a seat as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 1965. In June 1968 LBJ nominated the very liberal Fortas for promotion from Associate Justice to Chief Justice, to replace Earl Warren, who had announced that he was retiring effective on the confirmation of his successor. Republican Senators and Southern conservative Democratic Senators stalled the nomination, hoping (correctly, as it turned out) that a Republican would be elected and would nominate a conservative successor to Warren. A vote to break a four-day filibuster failed on October 2 and Fortas asked that his name be withdrawn. Johnson's nomination of Fortas was not helped by the fact that LBJ nominated a Texas crony, Homer Thorneberry, a non-spectacular lower court federal judge, to take Fortas's Associate Justice seat.
[link|http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:g9uJ-xs6dtEJ:www.nevergoback.org/filibuster.pdf&hl=en&ie=UTF-8|This page] says that about 20% of Supreme Court justices have been rejected, including 2 of Nixon's.
The tit for tat continues to this day.
Indeed. There are more news outlets, and more interest groups with a stake in the outcome, so the scrutiny of any new nominee is going to be increasingly intense.
Cheers,
Scott.
