The traditional Borking, which was tried on several of President Bush's own circuit-court nominees, proceeded like this:
1) A Republican president nominated to a federal appellate court someone who had made public statements or issued opinions that indicated he or she was likely to take a strict constructionist approach to the law and the Constitution.
2) These statements or opinions were unearthed by Senate Democrats and liberal interest groups, and publicized by their allies in the liberal media.
3) The Democrats decry the statements and/or opinions as evidence the nominee is "out of the mainstream" or an "extremist."
If this did not produce the votes needed to stop the nominee, character assassination was employed. When that did not work on President Bush's appellate court nominees during the president's first term, the Democrats resorted to filibustering.
They knew, and the Republicans knew, that conservatives were one move away from finally breaking the cycle of Borking. President Bush would nominate to the Supreme Court an unabashed strict constructionist with a record to prove it. If the Democrats took the Borking process on that nominee all the way to a filibuster, the Republican Senate majority would change Senate rules and end the filibuster of judicial nominees.
But Bush blinked -- twice -- and picked nominees he thought would provide the Democrats with no material for an attempted Borking.
That means, among other things, that unless Harriet Miers surprises the nation by going into a Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee and speaking with a candor that hasn't been heard there since Robert Bork testified before a Democrat-controlled committee in 1987, young strict-constructionist lawyers around the country will understandably draw the conclusion that if they ever publicly say or write what they honestly think about great constitutional controversies, they can forget about serving on our nation's highest court.