The Bork Foundation Responds to Rich Lowry's Column That Refers to Robert H. Bork

​Rich Lowry writes in his column, Confirmation Hearings Shouldn’t be so Worthless  (https://www.joplinglobe.com/opinion/columns/rich-lowry-confirmation-hearings-shouldnt-be-so-worthless/article_174e29ec-955e-540c-8294-4adbafb17af2.html) that Judge Bork was defeated because he was “acerbic and uncoachable.”
 
This is simply wrong. Judge Bork was defeated because:

1. The Democrats took control of the Senate by winning elections in 1986
2. President Reagan was weakened by Iran/Contra
3. Howard Baker was chief of staff and was instinctually timid, not a wartime consigliere the president needed
4. More than 100 left wing groups organized to block him
5. Bork’s support from a handful of conservative groups was enthusiastic but no match for the legion of well-funded leftists
6. Ted Kennedy fueled the fire with his “Robert Bork’s America” speech on the Senate floor and created a Southern strategy to scare moderate senators

 
As for being acerbic and uncoachable:
 
If you mean acerbic as in sharp and forthright, well yes he was. He didn’t have a choice having written so much over so many years. Perhaps being pummeled for weeks by outrageous accusations that you allowed women to be sterilized, wanted to outlaw contraception, and ban blacks from lunch counters, you would be a bit testy, too.
 
Uncoachable? How do you coach a man who doesn’t have a political bone in his body? He doesn’t think that way. What I think Mr. Lowry is saying without realizing it is that Judge Bork is honest and that it would have been better if he was not. He didn’t know how to dissemble like the panel sitting in front of him.
 
So, respectfully, Mr. Lowry has bought into the revisionist wisdom (mostly promoted by libertarians and Democrats) about my father’s confirmation defeat that tries to blame him for his loss. I suggest that had he attempted to be like all the nominees for the Court that followed him, he would have been dishonest and still would have been defeated.