[prairiebreeze]

Yup. And now Frist can't do it even if he wanted to. All this dithering, all this time wasted.

What a bunch of useless, worthless dorks. God help our country.

[randita]

The Republicans had the votes but they didn't have the guts.

They HAD the votes as of last week, but a few of the "7" changed their minds, it would seem.

[ItsOurTimeNow]

Right on.

We've been had. Every one of us who thought they were voting for a conservative has been given the shaft with this sell-out deal.

As Laz once said, "The GOP is the France of politics."

[browardchad]

Sowell puts the blame where it belongs: on every so-called Republican senator.

[Noachian]

So, why are we suppose to vote for a Republican if the idiot gives away the store?

[Nita Nupress]

Someone please try to remember to ping me if an article comes down the pike that directly addresses the "stolen FBI file" issue. I really, really wish this would become the focus of conservative media.

It's time to tell it like it is. Bring it out in the open and put a spotlight on it. Rush, are you listening? (You were great yesterday, btw!)

[OESY]

Appearing on MSNBC's "Hardball last" month, McCain argued that Republicans should retain the judicial filibuster because they might want to use it themselves someday.

"I say to my conservative friends, some day there will be a liberal Democrat president and a liberal Democrat Congress," said McCain. "And do we want a bunch of liberal judges approved by the Senate of the United States with 51 votes if the Democrats are in the majority?"

But that "someday" already happened. In the early 1990s, we had a liberal Democratic president and a liberal Democratic Senate. When President Clinton nominated former ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg and former Ted Kennedy aide Stephen Breyer to the Supreme Court, both won the eager support of most Senate Republicans. McCain meekly voted for both.

This brings us to America's court-driven journey leftward, which McCain & Co.'s deal would help the Democrats make a one-way trip.

In recent decades, un-elected judges have usurped the role of elected legislatures in deciding questions that go to the very core of America life. Can a doctor kill an unborn child? Is marriage only between one man and one woman, or can two men or two women marry each other? Does the First Amendment protect a "free speech" right to sell pornography, but not a right for public policy groups to speak freely through paid advertising during a federal election campaign? Can prayers be said in public schools? Can the Ten Commandments be displayed on public property? Must God be expelled from American public life?

On all of these questions, un-elected judges have been driving America to the left. By electing and re-electing President Bush, who promised to put constitutionalists on the courts, and by electing a 55-member Republican Senate majority, voters have tried to drive America back to the right.

But thanks to McCain & Co., liberal Democrats still have a grip on the steering wheel.

-- Terence Jeffrey, Townhall.com, 5/25/05

[OESY]

Dems United?

Much of the conservative commentary about Monday's filibuster deal has been along the lines of this Thomas Sowell column:

The Senate Democrats hung tough and the Republicans wimped out. The Republicans had the votes but they didn't have the guts.

That is the bottom line on the compromise agreement that will allow votes to proceed on judicial nominees without a filibuster, except in "extraordinary" cases. In other words, the Democrats will filibuster only when they feel like filibustering, since they will define what "extraordinary" means to them.

This seems a rather obvious misreading of what happened, doesn't it? True, seven Republicans broke from their party in agreeing to abjure the "nuclear option," but seven Democrats also broke from theirs to allow votes on at least three nominees whom fellow Dems had spent years smearing as "extremist" and "out of the mainstream." And since the Senate has fewer Democrats than Republicans, the Democrats are actually the more divided party: 15.6% of Dems joined the compromise, vs. just 12.7% of Republicans.

What's more, at least three of the compromising Republicans--Mike DeWine, Lindsey Graham and John Warner--have publicly expressed a willingness to "go nuclear" should the Democrats act in bad faith in filibustering a nominee.

To our mind, though, the biggest misconception in Sowell's analysis is the assumption that the Democrats filibuster because "they feel like filibustering." The Dems' use of the filibuster was political, not recreational--a strategy that was at least plausible when they adopted it, but that proved disastrous.

The Democrats didn't begin using the filibuster right away when President Bush took office; they didn't need to. In 2001-02, after Jim Jeffords switched parties, the Democrats held a majority and were able to stop judges via party-line vote in the Judiciary Committee. The Republicans' two-seat net gain in the 2002 election gave the GOP the majority, whereupon the Democrats began employing the filibuster in 2003-04. In doing so, they showed an impressive unity. For once they actually seemed like an organized political party.

But the filibuster strategy was based on political assumptions that turned out to be faulty. In 2003-04, Senate Democrats thought they were running out the clock on a one-term president. Their plan for the 109th Congress was for Majority Leader Tom Daschle to shepherd through President Kerry's judicial nominees.

Instead, President Bush won re-election, and the Republicans won eight of nine contested Senate races. John Kerry* is still a senator, and Tom Daschle isn't. And the only Democrat to win a close Senate race, Ken Salazar of Colorado, said during his campaign that he opposed the judicial filibuster. Not surprisingly, Salazar was one of the seven compromising Democrats.

Did the Democrats really want to go through all this again? Well, some no doubt did. Hate is more important than success to the likes of Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy, and in any case senators from liberal states are unlikely to pay a price for obstructionism. But the filibuster strategy runs counter to the inclinations and political interests of a substantial minority of Democrats, including, as we noted yesterday, at least five of the seven compromisers.

From where we sit, then, the actions of the Republican compromisers look like not a capitulation but a way of letting Democrats back down from a losing position without being humiliated.

Why not humiliate the Democrats? Well, here's one reason: "Democrats agreed on Tuesday to clear the way for the Senate to vote on the controversial nomination of John Bolton as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, which was expected to pass mainly on party lines," Reuters reports. Had the Senate gone nuclear yesterday, Bolton's nomination would be suffering from the fallout.

* The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way promised 115 days ago to release his military records.

-- BEST OF THE WEB TODAY

[Born Conservative]

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

I just received a letter from the RNC asking if I had deserted the party because they did not get my normal donation yet.

I haven't replied yet.
I am tempted to reply this way.

The Republican party left me.
They got my money and my vote.
They just turn into trained dogs by the democrats by rolling over and playing dead.
They do nothing to stem the CRIMINAL INVASION of our country.
They let socialists control the country even though they are a minority.
Next they will teach you to fetch and heel.

[Marauder]

As usual, Sowell nails it.