The Senate's Cease-Fire



The Senate's Cease-Fire

By Howard Kurtz

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, May 24, 2005; 8:54 AM

No nuclear war -- wow! It doesn't get more exciting than this!!!

Now we can all spend the next few days firing shots about who won and who lost in last night's typically mushy Senate compromise.

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You can't even explain it in 10 seconds -- some Bush nominees get filibustered, some don't, and the Democrats promise to use the weapon only in "extreme circumstances," which frankly can mean anything they want it to mean. No wonder both Bill Frist and Harry Reid were declaring victory.

I confess: I've had a hard time getting excited over the filibuster showdown as a great clash of principles.

The reason: You know that if a Republican minority were blocking a Democratic president's judicial nominees, nearly everyone, from lawmakers to commentators, who is now passionately defending or denouncing Senate talkathons, would be taking the opposite position. This whole thing reeks of hypocrisy.

How do I know this? Because many of the players have done a 180 since the days when the Republican Senate was blocking Clinton judges.

I don't mean to minimize the importance of this battle. A virtual Senate shutdown would have had serious political repercussions for one or both parties. And there is a fairness question when nominees can't get votes. Although the Senate has long lived up to its reputation of 100 men and women, each armed with a nuclear bomb -- a club in which any member can slow things down for any reason.

Both Republicans and Democrats have chosen not to be embarrassed by their flip-flopping on this issue. Some of the examples were nicely compiled the other day by Dick Polman of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Tom Harkin, for instance, is defending the filibuster -- the same Tom Harkin who in 1995 called it "a relic of the ancient past" and vowed to join in "slaying the filibuster dinosaur." Harkin got 18 Democratic senators to vote for the measure, which was motivated by GOP opposition to the Clintonian agenda.

Orrin Hatch, who now argues strongly for the fairness of up-or-down votes, had a different view when he ran the Judiciary Committee in the Clinton years. He changed the panel rules -- allowing anyone to block a nominee from his or her home state with a "blue slip" -- that prevented 60 of Clinton's bench picks from getting a vote, some for as long as four years.

And the Republicans -- including Bill Frist, who now seeks to detonate the nuclear option -- filibustered Clinton nominee Richard Paez in 2000. Was Paez spectacularly unqualified? Republicans were ticked because he had pronounced California's Prop 187 an "anti-civil rights initiative." An important policy question certainly worthy of debate. But didn't Paez deserve an up-or-down vote?

Now let's see how the moderates' compromise is playing in the press:

The New York Times: "The bipartisan compromise announced late Monday by a group of centrist senators gave President Bush a limited victory by expressly granting three of his judicial nominees an up-or-down vote by the Senate, all but assuring their confirmations, and opening the door to votes for two others.

"But by explicitly exempting from the agreement two other judges opposed by Democrats, it did not meet Mr. Bush's oft-stated demand that all his nominees get a vote, and it did not foreclose the possibility that Democrats could block an eventual nominee to the Supreme Court."

Los Angeles Times: "Monday's last-ditch compromise on confirming federal judges was a striking reassertion of the power of the political center in a bitterly polarized environment, pulling the Senate back from the brink of a crisis that threatened to paralyze the institution and dramatically change its character.

"The sternest test of the fragile accord will come when the Senate takes up the next nomination to the Supreme Court, possibly as early as this summer, and partisan pressures intensify.

"Still, the agreement -- in which seven moderate Republicans broke ranks from their party and joined seven moderate Democrats -- is an unusual challenge to Bush and GOP leaders who until now have commanded remarkable party discipline on a wide range of issues."

Boston Globe: "Emerging from their weeks of negotiations like a long-sequestered jury, Senate moderates delivered a stunning verdict to the White House and Congress: Politicians have spent too much time rallying their bases of support and not enough time coming together in the national interest.

"Bruised by the sharp elbows of an administration determined to create a lockstep majority and of a Democratic Party equally determined to appease liberal backers, the 14 moderate senators seized control of the Senate agenda in a coup that could have ramifications far beyond the narrow issue of judicial appointments."

The Washington Times casts its news story as a matter of party betrayal:

"Seven Senate Republicans bolted from their leaders last night and dropped their support for the 'nuclear option' in exchange for seven Democrats' abandoning filibusters against three of President Bush's judicial nominees."

Ye shall know said deal by its enemies, says Salon's Tim Grieve:

"If you were confused about which side won, it helped to look at who was angry at the deal. Focus on the Family's James Dobson called it 'a complete betrayal,' while Eli Pariser of MoveOn claimed victory."

Josh Marshall:

"We're supposed to say we got a great deal to win clearly through spin what could not be won so clearly on the merits. It seems an awfully bitter pill to forego the filibuster on both Brown and Owen, particularly the former.

"And the main issue isn't resolved so much as it's delayed. The moderate Republicans agree to preserve the filibuster so long as the Democrats use it in what the moderate Republicans deem a reasonable fashion. And yet the use of the filibuster, by its very nature, almost always seems unreasonable to those whom it is used against.

"And finally there's the key problem: the White House. Can this agreement really withstand the appointment of another hard right nominee? The subtext of the compromise must be that neither side will be pushed beyond its limits. But that would, I think, force the Democrats to resort to the filibuster. And then everything, presumably, would unravel from there. It's hard for me to see how this deal survives the sort of appointee President Bush seems all but certain to appoint to the Supreme Court."

John Hinderaker at Powerline: "What a hideous deal! The Democrats have agreed to cloture on only three nominees, and they have made no commitment not to filibuster in the future, if there are 'extraordinary circumstances.' Of course, the Dems think any nominee who is a Republican is 'extraordinary.' The Dems have just wriggled off the hook on some of the nominees that, politically, some of them did not want to be seen voting against.

"Someone explain to me why the Republicans haven't been rolled once again. To me, it looks like a pathetic collapse on the part of the Republicans--not the leadership, but Senators like McCain who sold out their party."

Liberal Coalition: "I never expected this kind of lily-livered nonsense. Three of the most extreme Republican radicals (Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryor, and Priscilla Owen) get a pass to lifetime appointments on the federal bench."

Sigh-Good Grief:

"it appears the stupidly liberal fake 'republican' john mccain has managed to leave the unconstitutional judicial committee filibuster in place. this effectively forces a super majority to approve judicial nominations whereas the Founders did not feel it necessary to require a super majority else they would've specified one. this is absolutely atrocious."

Great! Both sides' partisans hate the deal.

Now for those writing before the deal. American Prospect editor Michael Tomasky sees grave danger in the GOP attempt:

"This is counter to everything the American system of government was supposed to be about. . . .

"Tom DeLay's pursuit of the Terri Schiavo legislation and Frist's insistence on the nuclear option may seem to be about different things, but they are both motivated by exactly the same impulse: They're bricks in the wall of changing the United States from a pluralistic government in which no single movement has too much power into a monolithic government in which all the power rests in one movement."

Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum sees a double-edged sword:

"The danger is that the ruling creates a precedent that applies to all Senate rules. No matter what Karl Rove thinks, it's likely that Democrats will one day control the Senate again, and when they do they could use the exact same theory to wipe out all filibusters and pass legislation willy nilly. Liberal legislation tends to be harder to reverse than conservative legislation, so in the long term this could do a lot of harm to conservative causes."

David Brooks must be happy. He wrote the other day congressional moderates "can't just shove something through on the rough and dirty the way the partisans do. They can't lock themselves in the room until they reach a deal and then march out and announce it to the press. . . .

"No more sweetheart press for the responsible middle. Put up or shut up."

Captain's Quarters is fed up with McCain:

"The Democrats have recently begun a scare campaign that claims Republicans want to eliminate the filibuster altogether, not just for judicial nominations but also for legislation. This new conspiracy theory states that the GOP will set a precedent on Tuesday that makes it easy for the majority to cast off this particular Senate tradition. Unsurprisingly, John McCain mouthed this canard to the press:

" 'We're talking about changing the rules of the Senate with 51 votes, which has never happened in the history of the United States Senate,' Mr. McCain said, adding that he was worried that eliminating the filibuster for judicial nominees would lead to the elimination of the 214-year-old parliamentary tactic altogether. . . .

"McCain must have fallen asleep during Senate History Month, because the GOP won't be setting any precedent on Tuesday -- only following the four set by Robert Byrd and the Democrats. Byrd changed the filibuster rules four times during his tenure as Majority Leader, abetted in at least one instance by former VP Walter Mondale, who now writes silly op-eds about the danger of such maneuvers to the Republic. Instead of listening to his Republican colleagues and paying attention to the facts, however, McCain continues in his ongoing quest to pander to the anti-Republican sentiment in the press."

Walter Shapiro tells the HuffPost he's had writer's block, and updates the old Dr. Johnson adage: No man but a Blog-head ever wrote except for money.

"My problem was that I felt compelled to opine about the Washington topic of the moment, the filibuster, that legendary legislative logorrhea once beloved by Strom Thurmond. But my position felt too wimpy for the blogosphere, since I have been rooting for the Dirty Dozen moderates, led (surprise) by John McCain, to cut a deal to end the filibuster fisticuffs. (The Washington Post has an Importance of Being Earnest editorial staking out this high-minded position). But why am I identifying with this bipartisan band of spineless centrists (a point David Brooks makes) when as a left-of-center guy I could be parroting talking points provided by People for the American Way?

"The primary reason is practical politics, since my own conversations lead me to the same conclusion as Brooks: The Republicans will probably win 51-49 or 50-50 with Dick Cheney breaking the tie when the Senate votes Tuesday on a rule change eliminating judicial filibusters. What leaves me baffled is why the Democrats don't take any deal that they can get from the handful of Republicans who remain rightly fearful about detonating this nuclear option. Blocking two or three right-wing appeals court judges and preserving the glimmer of a chance to filibuster if Bush nominates, say, Ann Coulter to the Supreme Court may, alas, be the best outcome liberals can hope for in difficult times."

I boldly predicted yesterday that Bill O'Reilly would fire back at Howard Dean over the DNC chair's criticism of him on "Meet the Press." That Mr. O did, last night. He accused Dean of a "smear campaign," of "melting down," of "self-destruction," of having "made a fool of himself." Dean, said O'Reilly, "is a bitter and increasingly incoherent man." And "he represents the lowest form of discourse and shames the party." And, since he won't come on "The Factor," Dean is "a cowardly guttersnipe" to boot.

Now there's a word I haven't typed in quite awhile.

Bush is at 46 percent, says USA Today:

"President Bush's approval ratings for handling the economy, Iraq and Social Security have fallen to the lowest levels of his White House tenure, according to a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday.

"Congress doesn't fare much better. Solid majorities of those surveyed say congressional leaders in both parties, heading toward a Senate showdown today over the confirmation of judicial nominees, are 'acting like spoiled children,' not responsible adults. . . . By 47%-36%, those polled say the country would be better off if Democrats controlled Congress."

Here's a huge no-no in a NYT correction, as noted by Steve Bartin:

"An article on May 6 described a demonstration at Princeton University against the proposal by Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader and a Princeton graduate and board member, to bar filibusters on judicial nominees. The writer, a freelance contributor who is a Princeton student, did not disclose to The Times that before she was assigned the article, she had participated in the demonstration."

What are they teaching at Princeton?

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