GOP lawmakers began calling for the attorney general's resignation as early as 2011, and they even held him in contempt of Congress a year later.
Nowadays the issue keeping Holder in office has nothing to do with him, or Loretta Lynch, the Brooklyn U.S. attorney President Barack Obama picked to succeed him.
Instead it's a partisan fight over an abortion measure that is tucked into legislation aimed to thwart human trafficking. It's a bill that -- absent the abortion add-on -- enjoys overwhelming bipartisan support.
RELATED: Standoff over AG nominee Loretta Lynch
Republicans say they won't vote on Lynch's nomination unless Democrats yield on the unrelated bill. Some Democrats appear to relish that the fight is showing Republicans the minority party still has power.
"These should be my closing days," Holder joked in a speech in recent days. "Given the Senate's delays in scheduling Loretta Lynch's nomination for a vote, it's almost as if the Republicans in Congress have discovered a new fondness for me. Where was all this affection the last six years?"
As he nears the expected end of this tenure, Holder appears to be leaving with negative favorability ratings -- among those who know who he is, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. Overall, 29% of Americans polled have a favorable impression of him, while 35% have an unfavorable view, and 36% still haven't heard of him.
By now, Holder had hoped to be completing his plans for a cross-country driving trip with a friend -- a longtime wish for when he left office, he told CNN in an interview last year.
The fight already has forced lawmakers to postpone hearings for the Justice Department budget, which had been penciled in to begin this week, according to a Justice Department official.
Postponing those hearings is probably not a bad thing given the contentious tone between Republicans and the attorney general in oversight hearings last fall, which everyone thought would be Holder's last appearance on Capitol Hill.
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Eric Holder: Attorney General for life? - CNN.com