According to wiki the following is what happened. So it seems the republicans also played political hard ball towards court nominees. But not through character assassination.
Political commentators widely recognized Scalia as one of the most conservative members of the Court, and noted that a more liberal replacement could shift the Court's ideological balance for many years into the future. The confirmation of Garland would have given Democratic appointees a majority on the Supreme Court for the first time since the 1970 confirmation of Harry Blackmun.[3] After the death of Scalia, Republican Senate leaders announced that they planned to hold no vote on any potential nomination during the president's last year in office.[4] Senate Democrats criticized the move as being unprecedented and responded that there was sufficient time to vote on a nominee before the election.[5] Garland's nomination expired on January 3, 2017, with the end of the 114th Congress. The nomination remained before the Senate for 293 days,[6] the longest nomination process in the history of Supreme Court nominations.[7] With the failure of Garland's nomination, President Donald Trump, a Republican, successfully nominated Neil Gorsuch in 2017.[6]