The Washington Post notes that Majority Leader Bill Frist and GOP leaders are planning to use judicial nominations to polarize the Senate — and define the Democrats:
SENATE REPUBLICAN leaders have decided to reignite the judicial nomination wars. The reason is politics. Majority Leader Bill Frist’s strategy, with elections coming, is to schedule votes on the most controversial of the president’s remaining appeals court nominees, forcing Democrats to capitulate or filibuster — either of which works for him. The first will be Brett M. Kavanaugh, the president’s staff secretary and long-standing nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Next is Judge Terrence W. Boyle, whose nomination to the 4th Circuit has languished since the beginning of President Bush’s tenure. Both nominations are provocative, but their merits are different. The Senate should confirm Mr. Kavanaugh but not Judge Boyle….
Read the rest, which is a discussion of the judges. That’s another matter. The point is: once AGAIN polarization — a code word for division — is the way Frist and the GOP are choosing to operate.
Bush’s poll numbers are going down due to him losing his base. Perhaps the GOP’s base will see through this clear attempt at manipulation and do what Frist & Co clearly fear most — vote in 2006 on whether this present crew in the GOP should be returned to continue to keep their party in a headlock or bodyslam them on election day so a new generation of GOP leaders can start to take their party back.
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.