Will Majority Leader Bill Frist and top Senate Democrat Harry Reid reach a compromise on President Bush’s court nominations — one that can head off the so-called “nuclear option” and thus prevent increased polarization and a possible Senate work slowdown?
At issue are some 7 highly controversial court nominations that Democrats threatened to filibuster. The GOP for months has warned that if the Democrats don’t allow them to go to a vote they could opt for the “nuclear option,” using power-politics to ban the filibuster on judicial nominations. The Democrats, in turn have warned that there could be fallout in the Senate if the Republicans took such a step in elimating one of the Senate’s protections against what Alexis de Tocqueville called “Tyranny of the Majority.”
But now there are reports, such as this one from the AP, that some kind of compromise could be in the works:
In private talks with Majority Leader Bill Frist, the Senate’s top Democrat has indicated a willingness to allow confirmation of at least two of President Bush’s seven controversial appeals court nominees, but only as part of a broader compromise requiring Republicans to abandon threats to ban judicial filibusters, officials said Monday.
At the same time he offers to clear two nominees to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals for approval, officials said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., wants a third appointee to be replaced by an alternative who is preferred by Michigan’s two Democratic senators.
The officials spoke only on condition of anonymity, citing the confidential nature of the conversations between the two leaders.
Is this for real or a quintessential trial balloon? It would not be surprising if its real for several reasons:
- Frist has presidential aspirations. He could win over Christian Evangelicals but lose substantial chunks of libertarian Republicans and centrists.
- The Democrats don’t want to be in a position where they have to slow down the work of the Senate and take political heat for that. They remember a name “Newt Gingrich.”
- The latest Washingtonpost-ABC poll on this issue is CATASTROPHIC for the GOP. According to the Post, it shows “by a 2-1 margin, the public rejected easing Senate rules in a way that would make it harder for Democratic senators to prevent final action on Bush’s nominees. Even many Republicans were reluctant to abandon current Senate confirmation procedures: Nearly half opposed any rules changes, joining eight in 10 Democrats and seven in 10 political independents, the poll found.”
In other words: the GOP may muster the votes to get it through but this poll indicates it would be substantially outside of the mainstream of American political opinion — even among Republicans.
This is similar to poll results taken during the Terry Shiavo controversy: they showed most Americans and Republicans opposed the Congress and President Bush’s intervention.
But there is another significance. If there is indeed a compromise in the works it would show that the consensus is still at a premium in Congressional deliberations. Any kind of an agreement between the two parties would help defuse some of the growing polarization. But it’s polarization involving one faction of the GOP versus fairly solid Democrats, somewhat split centrists, plus some more traditional Republicans.
See our previous post on the nuclear option here.
UPDATE: Crooks And Liars has a video of a GOP filibuster against one President Johnson’s supreme court nominee Abe Fortus by GOP Sen. Robert Griffin, which suggests the Democrats’ use of the filibuster is not as “unprecedented” in the Senate as Senator Frist has asserted.
Linked to OTB Traffic Jam
UPDATE II: Media Matters documents here in enormous detail how the phrase “nuclear option” was indeed coined by Republicans — NOT as some GOPers are now claiming by the press and Democrats.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.