Burnt Orange Report

I'd like to apologize for the type--I have no idea what is up with the font, etc.

Believe me, there are plenty of conservatives that are just as pissed. Go check out National Review or Powerline.

I take that as a good thing. If both the hard right and the hard left are not happy, then they did something right, IMO.

Senator Reid:

"Attempts to trample the Constitution and grab absolute control are over."

Neville Chaimberlain:

"I believe it is peace in our time."

Don't get me wrong. Normally, I love compromises. Senators are supposed to work towards a middle ground and compromise.

But this is not a compromise - it is appeasement. The nuclear option was a threat. It was a successful threat and there's nothing to guarantee that Frist will not use the threat again to achieve his ends when other federal court nominees or Supreme Court nominees are brought before a vote.

Yes, a showdown with the nuclear option might have been disastrous - we might have lost the filibuster. But if we lose the filibuster, it will be because we did not have enough votes to stop the Senate from breaking it's own rules - that will not change a month or two months down the road when they pull this stunt again.

We just ceded Czechoslovakia. This hasn't stopped a "nuclear option" showdown, merely delayed it, and we are in a much worse-off position when it finally comes.

So the agreement only says they've invoked cloture on the 3 nominees that everyone hates, that just means that they get up/down votes. Does anyone have any idea how many Republicans, especially the Centrists, will vote against these nominees?

I think that this compromise is a good thing. The filibuster is saved, that is the most important thing. Frankly, I never thought Pryor should be filibustered, the guy has deep religious beliefs but he promised to judge on the law. I was skeptical until he swiftly and unflinchingly removed Roy Moore from the bench for his demagoguery.

Those who whine about this deal would've hated the Senate back in the Webster-Calhoun-Clay era...

James Dobson's reaction to this most frangible deal, which won't hold, makes it almost (almost) worthwhile:
"This Senate agreement represents a complete bailout and betrayal by a cabal of Republicans and a great victory for united Democrats," Dobson said. "Only three of President Bush's nominees will be given the courtesy of an up-or-down vote, and it's business as usual for all the rest. The rules that blocked conservative nominees remain in effect, and nothing of significance has changed.

"Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Chief Justice William Rehnquist would never have served on the U. S. Supreme Court if this agreement had been in place during their confirmations. The unconstitutional filibuster survives in the arsenal of Senate liberals.

"We are grateful to Majority Leader Frist for courageously fighting to defend the vital principle of basic fairness," Dobson added. "That principle has now gone down to defeat.

We share the disappointment, outrage and sense of abandonment felt by millions of conservative Americans who helped put Republicans in power last November. I am certain that these voters will remember both Democrats and Republicans who betrayed their trust." (from redstate.org)

Seems to me one of the biggest losers in this deal is Senator Cornyn, who was whining on the Senate floor about (a)not being included in drafting the agreement and (b) how bad the agreement is.

Cornyn has made himself irrelevant in the Senate by cozying up to Dobson and Frist, and has missed out on the group of new Senate power brokers. Texans will tolerate a lot of things, but irrelevance and a lack of independence are not characteristics we prize in our Senators.

Don't underestimate the value of delay in politics. Unlike appeasement in war, a Republican campaign like the nuclear option requires enormous political capital. You have to mobilize public support, control media coverage, and hold the attentions and sympathies of a fickle public. A compromise and a significant delay breaks the momentum, and now the campaign is left with a press eager to cover something else, a short-attentioned public who thinks the issue is over (and therefore, effectively is), and in this case, a significant portion of voters who are frankly tired and unsympathetic with the issue (look at the polling lately on the filibuster - the fact that an arcane, procedural issue draws as much as +20 disapproval ratings indicates there wasn't much political capital left). Plus, Frist's internal power suffered, and the sharks are circling - plenty of GOP Senators have got to smell Frist's vulnerability after his third or fourth major leadership defeat in just a few years and want his post.

A real effort to re-mobilize the nuclear option would be expensive, time-consuming, and working against renewed inertia. Moreover, Republican strategists would do well to remember that any issue hammered at too many times at the expense of others creates fatigue and backlash - look at Lewinsky and the 1998 mid-term elections. The GOP is already facing an uphill fight for 2006, and making their record nothing but massive, fruitless efforts on the filibuster and social security isn't good politics. Come election year, voters ask what have you done for me recently, and two high-profile programs that went nowhere, especially one that has no immediate impact on anybody's lives, isn't a great record to run on.

There are only a matter of months before election season kicks into high gear. The GOP record needs to show major initiatives passed between last November and then. This time, there's no big education bill, big Medicare bill (bad in our eyes, but accomplishments nonetheless). Iraq is fading from public view (and what news there is has been very bad). GOP legislators have got to be a little fed up with serving their leaders' agendas exclusively, especially given that many of them are Frist's rivals for the leadership and for the Presidential nomination.

I think this compromise is a de facto return to the status quo in exchange for the one time measure of an up or down votes on three nominees. We lose four bad ones - Saad, Myers, Kavanaughm, and Haynes. After that, there won't be the political ability to enforce the definition of "extraordinary circumstances." Without another credible threat from a united nuclear option effort, Dems will be just as able to filibuster the next bad nominee. After all, we're the ones who get to say who is extreme - it's not like we weren't already claiming extraordinary circumstances anyway. Looked at this way, it's easy for any future filibuster to just say, look, our interpretation of the agreement was that Brown, Owen, and Pryor were given votes notwithstanding their extraordinary badness, but that was the price we paid so the terms of the filibuster wouldn't change. I think that's how the leadership understands it - Reid's statement about the Supreme Court sounded to me pretty much like a declaration that we have full flexibility to filibuster that seat.