Well, I appreciate that OO has rightly pointed out that nominees from both sides of the aisle tend avoid any actual discussion of controversial issues. He correctly brings up Republican nominees and their response to RVW. This has been going on as long as I have been following Supreme Court nominations.

What I find baffling is that many of you are in a complete uproar over her somewhat dismissive response to the obvious grenade that was being tossed her way. Many of you seem to be begging for, instead, a complete nonanswer that provides no actual insight into her thinking on this matter. You know, like the nonanswers provided by every other nominee over the past few decades when it comes to controversial topics.

Is that type of nonanswer actually better than what she did? In neither case does it provide any insight into the nomnee. So why bother going through those pointless motions? In a sense I would think that perhaps you would respect her response.

In terms of Republicans struggling to answer the question that they posed to the nominate as a gotcha... they had plenty of time to come up with a reasonable answer after the fact. It was certainly predictable that the question would be posed to them as well. The fact that they could not come up with anything better despite having plenty of prep time points to the obvious difficulty with this question in this setting.