Filibusted
May 23rd, 2005 at 8:30 pm by Susie
We’re supposed to be thrilled to allow votes on these three clowns? I’ve has a long, exhausting day and maybe I’m too tired to understand why this is a good thing:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Averting a showdown, centrists from both parties reached agreement Monday night on a compromise that clears the way for confirmation votes on many of President Bush’s stalled judicial nominees, leaves others in limbo and preserves venerable Senate filibuster rules.“In a Senate that is increasingly polarized, the bipartisan center held,” said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.
“The Senate is back in business,” echoed Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of 14 senators who signed the two-page memorandum of agreement, which cited “mutual trust and confidence.”
Under the terms, Democrats would agree to oppose any attempt to filibuster - and thus block final votes - on the confirmation of Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor. There is “no commitment to vote for or against” the filibuster against two other conservative nominees, Henry Saad and William Myers.
As for future nominees, the agreement said they should “only be filibustered under extraordinary circumstances,” with each Democrat senator holding the discretion to decide when those conditions had been met.
UPDATE: John at AMERICAblog says this means they won’t get away with extreme SCOTUS nominees.
Why have the right to filibuster if you aren’t willing to utilize it? The Democrats had rolled the cots out; now they have no need for them. If this is a victory, as the Democrats say, it is a pyrrhic victory at best.
If nothing else, George, Bill, and James are asking themselves where their balls went.
At first blush, it looks bad to Dems, but I say give it some time. I suspect Harry Reid knows what he is doing.
Jez, I messed that first part up, didn’t I.
I agree completely. I’m having trouble seeing how agreeing to give them what they’ve really always wanted (the three most extreme of the nominees and possibly two more) is a win for us. And we have nothing but their word, which is really nothing, to keep them from using the “nuclear option” the next time this comes up.
If we had the six votes, then its a bad deal. If we didn’t then its a good deal.
Why it might be a good deal anyway:
- Freepers are mad as hell about it. Meaning we’ve wedged them, at least to some extent. If some fraction of them do indeed stay home in 2006 and/or withhold money (or work AGAINST sitting Rep senators), all the better for us.
- Frist loses big time! He fails to get up-down votes on “all the nominees”, loses control of a faction of that which he is supposed to be leading, AND will get the blame from the freepers.
- Assuming that the nuclear option comes out of mothballs at the first SCOTUS nomination fight, maybe (and just maybe) this agreement gives Snowe and Chafee and Warner and Collins et al. the political cover to vote against going nuclear.
Or I’m being naive, looking for sliver linings that aren’t there.
Oh, and Lindsey Graham said that now the White House knows it has to do more consulting with Congress about who they send up for nomination. I think there’s really something to that. Centrist Republicans can’t be happy having been put into a really awkward position by these crappy White House nominations. So if Graham is right, we either get more moderate nominees, or we get an increasingly annoyed bunch of Senators, which in turn translates to a lamer duck of a president.
But there is that naive part, too.
So is it a good deal? a bad deal?
Maybe yes, Maybe no.
I wouldn’t worry too much about Frist, nor feel particularly exultant at his supposed defeat. The movement conservatives love to see themselves as opressed underdogs, even when they’re in power, and that’s how he’ll spin it, as a battle against the no-good scheming moderates for the soul of his party. And the money will flow.
Bush will get three of his marquee nominations and give up two of the lesser known ones. We get to keep the fillibuster, just as long as we promise not to use it. (Just one person could still scuttle this and that thought makes me miss Wellstone all the more. He could’ve talked about… I don’t know, the details of why Owens, Rogers Brown and Pryor are so unpalatable? You know, the bothersome little tidbits the press can’t be bothered with. )
And the wackos on the right are protected from the public seeing them being wackos, unlike in the Schiavo scandal(which the dems also failed to exploit).
This is a “republican defeat” as transitory and insignificant as Jeffords’s defection in 2001 proved to be in November of 2002.
Me no like.
Let’s face it the dems caved again. These guys have no balls what so ever.
Hmmm, something done by the middle. Haven’t seen that in a while. Looks like the continuing inflexibility of both wings is giving a handful of moderates some power.
Regarding Frist’s folly and judicial nominees, nobody likes a compromise. However, the silver lining for me was to read James Dobson’s teeth-gnashing in my morning paper.
Well, it seems likely it’s done premanent damage to Frist with his base in the wacko religious right. So even if we have to go back and fight this battle another day I think something’s been gained.