This issue comes to us mostly because of the very political outbursts of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas who both run around expressing their right-wing politics at every opportunity. That is rather new to the court.
We can even put the actual politics aside in the case of Clarence Thomas. He has expressed desire to overturn the most important case in the 20th Century, Brown vs Education. The UNANIMOUS 1954 decision against segregation. He has recently voted for stripping the Voting Rights Act of 1964 giving the GOP its recent foray into suppressing the black vote. There are his past statements that he got where he is through Affirmative Action which he now wants to deny to all other African Americans. The problem is all that does not come from political ideology, but from his seething drooling purple turning hatred of black women because of Anita Hill showing him for the turd he is back in 1991. After he squeaked through to the Supreme Court he left his African American culture, his African America church and married a white woman. A man driven by so much personal hatred for himself and his own race he can’t even talk.
He and his wife are big supporters of the Tea Party and take in millions of dollars and gifts and vacations from the Koch Brothers. Things no past or present Supreme Court justice does or has done.
The kicker is that even though taking money so openly as he does is easily impeachable, Clarence Thomas gives us all the finger, laughing that he has nothing to worry about because LIBERALS will not impeach a black Supreme Court Justice. And he is right.
Just like no CONSERVATIVE would ever impeach a black President.
And there lies the problem. The advantage Republicans enjoy, they have no problem going as low as possible and they have the money to back it up.