I am having a hard time with this whole Senate compromise thing. If the republicans have the majority in the Senate, then why are these 7 republican Senators compromising on such an important issue? Can somebody please tell me why the democrats are so happy with this deal. Where is the leadership on the republican side of the aisle? Where is Senator Frist? I was thinking of maybe supporting this guy for President!!! I guess we will have to start looking elsewhere!!

I really think that maybe republicans generally tend to be "nice guys" more often than the democrats tend to be. A word to the wise --- YOU CAN BE A GOOD, NICE, KIND, SWEET PERSON without being a DOORMAT!!!

If the majority are a bunch of JELLYFISH, then we need to ask the President to step in and tell these guys to knock it off!! If you are the majority, then why are you not in control. I believe that the only thing compromised here is the republican position and credibility.

THESE GUYS ARE GIVING AWAY THE FARM!!!

LET'S GET SOME NEW REPUBLICANS IN THE SENATE TO REPLACE THE LILY LIVERED 7 AS SOON AS WE CAN!!!

IN OTHER WORDS, LET'S CALL FOR THEIR HEADS ON A PLATTER!!!

IT IS THE LEAST WE COULD DO!!!

AND IF YOU ARE IN ARIZONA, PLEASE STOP BACKING JOHN McCAIN (THE DEMOCRAT IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING!!!)

David:
No need to shout.

David:

You won. Enjoy it.

David - There's more than 2 positions in politics. The Republican party is a coalition, and sometimes it doesn't hang together. That's still better than not having a coalition and losing.

PJ -- exactly.

It is tiresome to listen to people who vacillate between "I see no difference between Bush and Kerry" and "They're giving away the farm".

My goodness, a conservative black woman has just been placed on a liberal appeals court and could very well become a supreme court justice. Who do you think Kerry would have appointed?

Coalitions and incrementalism are something conservatives are going to have to learn about -- and learn quick!

Randall: She's not there yet, but lets assume that the Dems are competent enough not to step on their own toes for the next month or so. I wouldn't call the DC circuit a "liberal" appeals court.

The point about the MOU is that, if the Republican senators had stuck together, we would have gotten the three, the other two, the two after that and anyone else the president nominated who had majority support, as the constitution contemplates. If the Reps had been really competent, they could have done that while preserving the filibuster. Instead, the pathetic seven have legitimized the filibuster and taken away the threat of its removal for at least this congress. You think that this makes it possible for the President to put JRB on the Supreme Court. I think that it guarantees that she would be filibustered.

But, the president can still save this, by making recess appointments, by forcing the issue with "extremist" judges, by ignoring the judicial preferences of the gang of 14. He might even be able to use it, by first nominating someone like Michael McConnell, who might not be filibustered. (Although, if memory serves, when he was confirmed there were Dems who said that he wouldn't be appropriate for the Supreme Court.) This can still turn out well for the Reps, but no thanks to the moderates.

David Cohen:

Your position, voiced on multiple threads, makes sense only if one assumes that the GOP would pay no price for using the nuclear option, which seems extremely optimistic.

Now we have a situation in which the GOP got some of what it wanted, kept its powder dry, and suffered no blowback.

How is this a net loss ?

Michael: First, I think that there was a compromise possible in which the Democratic moderates conceded the core of their argument, rather than the Republican moderates conceding the core of our argument.

Second, the Republican senators are paying a price for the compromise. (a) Bill Frist, for example, will never be president. (b) Right now it is only the three named judges who's nominations are likely resolved. Of the other four, two seem to have been thrown under the bus, in OJ's phrase, and the last two are in trouble. In the end, of the 10 judges the Dems objected to, the president might get only 3. That would be pathetic. (c) The pathetic seven have conceded that filibustering judicial nominees is appropriate and that the Dems get at least one more free filibuster this term, and potentially an unlimited number, depending upon the moderate Republican's willingness to stand up and fight. (d) The moderate Republicans have now demonstrated that they won't stand up and fight.

Third, I do think that there wouldn't have been much of a price to pay for triggering the nuclear option. It's too early in the cycle and this is too much inside baseball for it to make much of a difference in the 06 races.

David:

The core of the Democrats argument was that the three judges were too far Right to be on our courts. They conceded the point.

David Cohen:

2(a) and 3 are mutually exclusive, IMO. If it won't matter in '06, why would it matter in '08 ?

2(d) remains to be seen. As Orrin has been saying, they're all free to decide that they've been betrayed.

No, they're still saying that they are extremists outside of the mainstream. They're simply not going to filibuster these three for that reason. As least some Dems are expressly reserving the right to filibuster other judges for ideological reasons.

Michael: 2(a) and 3 are not mutually exclusive because 3 has to do with the electorate generally, where 2(a) has to do with all us right-wing nutjobs in the primaries. As for 2(d), you're right: the moderates could take the three judges and then spit out the hook. That would make this a good deal. But what have they ever done that would make us think that they would suddenly stand up and be counted?

David:

Yes, they helped put the outside-the-mainstream extremists on the court.

Somehow OJ has gotten the idea that the whole fight was about getting three people on the appeals court, and nothing else mattered. And that if you repeat the same statement over and over and over, it become even more true with each restatement.

Where as I want to crush my enemies, see them driven before me and hear the lamentations of their women. Where are the lamentations. I was promised lamentations.

Raoul:

Nothing else mattered. It's dressed up in high-falutin' rhetoric for the unwashed.

Ten appellate vacancies, ten more to come, 1 Supreme Court vacancy and another to come, and the only thing that matters is 3 appellate confirmations? And these 3 people, whose ideology is indistinguishable from Ronald Reagan's, have now been universally accepted as out-of-the-mainstream extremists?

oj - This was an agreement to torpedo any religious conservatives Bush may nominate to the Supreme Court. It is merely dressed up in the appearance of compromise so that the unwashed will not torpedo McCain's presidency.

Three extremists who just got a pass from the 14 for the Court.

pj:

How can it possibly hurt the GOP to have the Democrats try stopping a Catholic nominee?