Ed Morrissey has a post up about the possible compromise on Mr. Bush’s stalled judicial nominees being put together by a bipartisan group of centrist Senators. Cap’n Ed is treating it as a loss and so are most of his commenters.
Frankly, I don’t get it. Isn’t getting some of Bush’s appellate court nominees through the gauntlet better than having all of them stalled until the midterms? Or dumping the filibuster entirely?
Let’s face it, distinguishing between filibustering judicial nominees and filibustering legislation is sophistry. If the nominee filibuster is discarded, the legislative filibuster will only last until its first use.
Folks, there’s no such thing as a permanent majority. Carpe diem! Can someone explain to me why this isn’t a prudent move for Republicans?
UPDATE: I see that my thinking is pretty much in line with Robert Tagorda’s and Stephen Bainbridge’s.
UPDATE: Curiouser and curiouser. I’ve seen both eternal enmity for McCain pledged as a result of this compromise and eternal support. The reaction at Daily Kos appears to be schadenfreude, an unbecoming emotion at best. I guess I’m tone-deaf on this subject since it seems like a reasonable deal all around to me.
As usual, Joe Gandelman has an early run-down on blogospheric reaction.
Considering that the nuclear option was little more than glorified cheating, I’m glad that sanity prevailed.
Me, too, prak. I don’t see what the true believers like the Powerline guys are so upset about.
I don’t think that it’s a huge big deal, in the end, but I know what they’re upset about: this fight is a setup job for the Supreme Court nominations upcoming – there will likely be three before President Bush leaves office. The Democrats have preserved their ability to prevent the President from nominating strict constructionists to the Supreme Court, slowed down or stopped the ability of the President to nominate strict constructionists to the circuit courts, and in return only had to let through three judges that they were having a hard time justifying opposing (women, blacks, etc). In other words, for three circuit court judges, the Republicans put the Democrats in the driver’s seat on Supreme Court nominations.
And, by the way, there is no reason that the Democrats, when in the majority, cannot simply strip the filibuster for judges, as they did for four other categories of legislation in the past, when the Democrats were in the majority (including, interestingly, treaties, using the exact same justification that the Republicans were planning to use tomorrow about advise and consent: filibustering a Constitutional power of the executive is unconstitutional). So not only have the Republicans lost now, but they have preserved nothing for themselves when they are back in the minority. (If nothing else, the collapse of the power-sharing agreement after the defection of Jeffords showed that the current Democrats are after one-way compromises.)
In any case, what will be interesting to see over the coming years is if the Republicans can get enough Senators elected to prevent the filibuster from mattering (ie, more than 60), or if the Republicans will start making the Democrats actually filibuster.
Oh, well, it’s amazing how stupid the Republicans in the Senate are. They got rolled by the same tactics that the N. Koreans used on the Clinton administration, and that Iranians are trying right now with the Europeans. An agreement like the one the Republicans agreed to only works if both sides are acting in good faith. The Republicans have given up a tactic they cannot easily re-impose; the Democrats have given up basically nothing.
So that’s why Powerline is upset, though my advice to them would be to be careful what they wish for: divided government limits government action, which is generally a better thing than unlimited power even in the hands of one’s own Party.
Thanks, Jeff. At least that’s a lucid explanation which is more than I’ve read in the blogosphere at large so far.
I’m afraid I have to go with Jeff; this was a great deal for the Democrats and a terrible cave-in for the Republicans. In effect, the Republican Senate leadership just negotiated away the President’s right to appoint anyone to the Supreme Court in this Congress. The only constraint the deal imposes on the Democrats is the statement that they will not filibuster except under “extraordinary” circumstances. Does anyone doubt that any non-liberal Supreme Court nomination that Bush makes will be considered “extraordinary”? And we’ll be right back to square one.
Further, this whole episode has permanently changed the judicial confirmation process:
1. Circuit and appaleate judges are now subject to close scrutiny. Past Presidents have pretty much had free rein in this area. Whether one considers this good or bad, at the very least it’s going to add substantially to the Senate workload.
2. Previously, the standard for evaluating judicial nominations was limited to whether they were qualified as far as their experience and knowledge of the law. This is no longer true. A nominee’s philosophical and political views are now in play. It is now OK to veto judges for explicitly political reasons, and conversely, it is now OK to nominate them for same. Should the Republicans some day put together a 60-seat majority in the Senate, and if they desired to do so, they could confirm a Supreme Court judge who explicitly promises to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Similarly, if the Democrats some day have a 60-seat majority, they could confirm a judge who explicitly promises to use a case to vote to impose Kyoto standards on the U.S. without a treaty.
3. Only minorities now have the political standing to be confirmed. For as long as the current political alignments last, white males need not apply for federal judgeships.
I’m with Dave. Part of Bush’s political saavy is letting the other side save face even as he’s getting his way. I suspect the Kossack’s schadenfreude is just a bluff; they’re pissed, they wanted to stop these nominees.
And maybe Powerline is screaming because of the nature of the blogosphere: you get more attention by end-of-the-world rhetoric, a trick Sullivan has perfected
Beautiful Atrocities ~ I think YOU just nailed the motivation of some. I think traffic may be driving this one.