Those 14 senators are whackadoodles. There are too many on the left like drunk Teddy and too many on the right like Grassley that will refuse to be muzzled.
I suppose the 14 can prance around the senate floor all day saying the nuke option is gone, but saying it doesn't make it so.
ugh....the swimmer is sickening
News flash Teddy the Austin-American Statesman is a left wing fringe group.
Wow, apparently there's a lot of Kool-Aid going around in here. Let's stop with the Area 51-esque ridiculousness about John McCain running as Hillary's VP candidate or even not being Republican. Sorry that not all of us Republicans are zealots of the first order. Unfortunately for you bomb-throwers out there, you need us in order to govern. And we know it.
- First of all, Bill Frist is just about the worst majority leader ever. Why? Because he doesn't lead. Frist has been in the Senate long enough to know damn well that a deal was going to get brokered on this issue. That's just politics. But instead of insuring that he was at the table, Frist's arrogance and own personal desires to be president got in the way of him doing his job. As a result, he was cut out of the dealmaking completely. If Frist wanted to talk like George Allen, he never should've run for a leadership position. People expect leaders to get things done. Allen can pontificate on Imus all he wants: HE HAS NOTHING ELSE TO DO. Someone needs to remind Frist that follow and get out of the way are the only two options he has left, and neither is very presidential.
- Frist should've brought this issue to a head months ago. He completely lost control of the issue through his perpetual hand-wringing and non-leadership. If he was going to go nuclear, February would've been a great time to do it. But here's one for all you nutjob conspiracy theorists out there: maybe this is the outcome Frist really wanted. It preserves the institution while still allowing Frist to keep his hands clean. Many on this board clearly don't think Frist did anything wrong. He can have his cake and eat it too.
- Frist stuck himself out on the ledge in an attempt to court social conservatives and got blown off the roof by a strong wind. The overwhelming majority of America is not as conservative as those voters Frist is courting. Fact is, most of America says cut the deal and move on. Americans like compromise.
- There were six other Republican senators at that press conference besides John McCain. It's not like McCain acted in a vacuum. Those 14 senators now have more power than either Bill Frist or Harry Reid when it comes to judicial appointments. Not a bad deal for those senators, huh? They're going to be the ones to pick our next Supreme Court nominee. Alberto Gonzales might be as conservative a choice as you're going to get.
The reason the moderates won the day is because Bill Frist gave them five months to coalesce. You can scream about McCain all you want, but the guy you should be hanging today is the Majority Leader.