The 'deal' is just a delay. The Democrats have allowed a couple 'straight up' votes in exchange for the Republicans not pulling the trigger now. The Dems are saving their fight for the SCOTUS. I fear the Republicans won't have the resolve to follow through. We'll see.
The failure was a srategic one. Frist allowed the dems and MSM to spin this for weeks on end. He should have not hesitated so long before pulling the trigger. No more warnings or second chances for them. The very second a dem tries to block another nominee, Frist needs to pull the trigger IMMEDIATELY!!.
So, the agreement strikes a deal that was properly rejected as unacceptable only a few days ago. Risibly couched in the rhetoric of “compromise,” it freezes in place an outcome in which 70 percent of the ten nominees at issue have been defeated. To the extent it says anything of immediate consequence, it is unenforceable. And to the extent it says something definitive, it is wrong and it lays important groundwork for future filibustering. Some victory.
Withal, John dons rose-tinted glasses and says the deal “establishes the principle that conservative judges have every right to serve on the higher benches even if Democrats can't stand it.” In this straw-grasping lies the truth about just how badly defeated conservatives are here.
Does anyone really think it needed to be established that conservative judges “have every right to serve on the higher benches”? That is self-evident. But, in today’s arrangements, notwithstanding a president reelected with more votes than any president in history and a one-sided 55-45 margin in the Senate, that which is self-evident somehow needs to be reestablished as a “principle” whenever a determined minority objects.
Alas, reestablishing a principle already long established turns out to be hard work — the vigor for which appears sadly lacking.