And he was doing so well until he wrote this.
Kristol is making a judgment call, not an ideological one. We shall see. He may be right. I suspect he is, unless Brown (who won't be), or maybe Luttig is nominated. I also doubt there will be a filibuster.
It's really very simple.
We'll have a filibuster unless:
1) Democrats in red states do not want this hung around their neck next election.
2) RINO's such as Lindsey and DeWine stop courting the elites and do the job their constituents expect of them by nuking the filibuster.
I tend to give the first one better odds. Political preservation can be a powerful motivator, though fear is being enforced from their leadership. The second option concerns bridging the RINO's arrogance, a little tougher to climb that ladder.
Hmmm...times have changed...Boyden Gray said that they never had 60 votes for Clarence Thomas...however a vacancy on SCOTUS is front page news, while a vacancy on a lower federal court is not. Eventually both sides of the aisle would eventually want the story off the front page -- interest groups would run out of money sliming nominees, no?
Nuclear Option, here we come!
Agree, Kristol doesn't get it. For the Dems, this is a life and death struggle. They cannot allow a conservative judge, however qualified, to get on the SCOTUS. Not only would it thwart its liberal social agenda, which cannot pass legislatively, but also, it would alienate its rabid liberal base, e.g., Move-on.org. Almost no Dem senator wants to be on record allowing a vote on a conservative nominee.