So sayeth the man of the 50-0 electoral college vote.

I don't buy it for second. Was Graham not quoted as saying that some of the judges would get 50 votes and some would not?

j:

& stuck by it while y'all went all wobbly.

b:

If they can't get 50 they are outside the mainstream.

OJ--made me laugh, at least...

Only their most rabid partisans will be distraught.

Or maybe it's a deal that only moderates could like.

And, by the way, not for lack of my trying...

Battles over Supreme Court nominees reverberate in the public discourse for a long time; battles over federal court judges do not. Which is why the Group of Seven's action Monday will anger the hard core political junkies, but have little effect on their standing with the masses. But pull the rug out from under a Supreme Court nominee either later this year or in 2006, and then you'll see a firestorm with widespread support among norma; GOP voters.

David:

No one likes it. Everyone always wants more.

---"Assuming that our guys hold themselves to that promise," says another Republican staffer working on the Judiciary committee, "then we're looking at a clean sweep for confirmations."---

Assuming -- 1st mistake

How do they know a deal wasn't cut to throw Myers over? The proof will be in the voting.

Via Powerline:

Check out NRO's Bench Memos for great coverage of the Deal. From my perspective, here are the two essential facts: (1) as virtually every Republican involved stressed, thr Deal makes sense for the Republicans only if the seven Democrats they worked with can be trusted to act in good faith on President Bush's current and future nominees and (2)Robert Byrd is the leader of the seven Dems.

Besides recess appointments for Myers and Saad, the President should renominate Estrada if possible and find more women and other minorities who are very conservative. Put pressure on the weasels by appointing people who are hard to filibuster but Ralph Neas hates.

The Dems have essentially admitted that they had no basis for filibustering Brown, Owen, Pryor, and the three Michigan judges.
Given that, they would look like total buffoons if they now filibustered a Supreme Court nomination of any of those six, or anyone else, on ideological grounds.
It's too bad, now, that Estrada pulled out, but his pulling out -- after losing his wife, etc. --was understandable.

Sandy:

Myers trouble is going to be torture and Graham, not the Democrats.

I haven't seen the exact lists of the 7 Dems but I got the impression that all were from red states (yes counting WV). So these Dems probably did the deal with an eye toward their reelection. This actually puts them in a box because if the deal blows up the GOP can still tag them as obstructionist and maybe even worse if they are seen as reneging on the deal.

AWW - No, Inouye is from a blue state, and Byrd doesn't care he's in a red state. I think on both sides it had little to do with electability, except for Collins, Snowe, Chafee.

The presence of loyal Republicans like Mike DeWine among the moderates suggests to me that Bush was involved behind the scenes, and DeWine was a Bush representative to steer the deal to terms acceptable to Bush. Ultimately, this was a political deal in which Republicans gave the Dems a temporary victory on judges in order to avoid looking like heavies and improve the Republican position in the 2006 election.

Governor Lingle has an approval rate over 60%.

Byrd has been running scared for months now.

"Only their most rabid partisans will be distraught." No. Anyone who can't see that this repudiation of their party, those who voted for them and the president by a despicable handful of sleazoids changed the landscape and made Bush the lamest of lame ducks, isn't looking very hard. The sharks smell blood in the water and when this episode is over, the left will have regained the power they believe is rightfully theirs.

In a world that only understands strength and power, an impotent Bush will become an object of ridicule -- wants to rule the world when he can't even control his own party hacks ha-ha-ha. Look for the polls in France and the Netherlands to start moving toward yes to the EU constitution and for further defections from our "allies."

Bush should make recess appointments of Bolton, Saud and Myers although at this point it probably doesn't much matter. Kofi is off the hook now paving the way for Clinton to be the next Secretary-General.

erp:

He lost nothing.

If the president has the nerve to give Myers and Saad recess appointments, then he will have made chicken salad from chicken, um, not-salad.

According to National Review's "Bench Memos" blog, Harry Reid is already promising more filibusters.

One wonders if perhaps the Democrats didn't just get snookered into a situation where they have to go back on their word almost immediately after giving it.

I just keep thinking: W is one of the best chess players ever. He's never more in command than when his opponents think they have him in a box.

and every filibuster breaks the deal for one of the gang.

The Crystal ball tells me that Bush will appoint the most extreme conservative to replace Rehnquist (presumably Estrada, lets say). There will be no filibuster supported by the 7 Democrats listed. Although Snowe, Collins, Spector, Chaffee will oppose the nomination, they will not support a filibuster. Estrada is in for Rehnquist. Democrats will figure there is no net gain for pro-life.

When there is a replacement for Stevens, Souter, O'Connor my Crystal ball fogs up.

h:

All three of them were appointed by Republican Presidents. Bush will find the most confirmable conservatives he can, and after this deal, that definition was pushed even further out. That is what the media will not figure out. To filibuster now, is to break a very public (and very mainstream-approved deal).

If Ginsburg retires, there will be more squawking, but I doubt if Bush listens.

"Eventually the question will be brought to a head, probably over a Supreme Court pick, but for now both sides got what they needed"

Um, the Supreme Court vacancy is almost certainly only a few weeks away. And the chance of the Dems filibustering whoever Bush picks is 100%. And the chance of the MSM supporting the Dems in such a move is 100%.

The fact that 3 judges are through today (we assume, but the MOU doesn't rule out a tacit deal to vote them down) who weren't yesterday is irrelevant--the comparison to make is this deal to what could have been, and ALL the judges could have gotten through (except for maybe Saad, since he committed the cardinal sin of calling a politician a scumbag, and scumbag politicians don't like their colleagues being so described).

Saad was a Spencer Abraham pay-off. Who cares?

b:

If I had a dollar for every day of my life where a Supreme Court vacancy was imminent I'd own the Red Sox.

But suppose there is an opening and the President picks Janice Rogers Brown, who the 7 Democrats just said is not filibuster-worthy. That's 62 votes in favor of breaking the filibuster, no?

That seems logical, oj. But it also seemed logical that John Kerry would find it a political necessity to resign from the Senate.

b;

Yes, he lost didn't he.

Guys: The deal doesn't say that the Democrats won't filibuster, it explicitly allows them to filibuster. The only limit is the limit imposed, at the time of the second or third or fourth filibuster, by any two of the pathetic seven if they conclude that the Dems, by their actions, have freed them to vote for the nuclear option -- at which point the Reps will be roasted by the MSM for breaking their word. As these are seven senators most likely to care about what the MSM thinks about them, they're very unlikely to think that line has been crossed.

There is nothing in this deal that stops them from filibustering JRB's appointment to the Supreme Court. There may be other reasons they can't get away with it, but it has nothing to do with this deal, the whole point of which, from the Dem's point of view, was to make such a filibuster possible.

It says the filbuster is only suitable for Extraordinary situations and that the conservatism of a Janice Rogers Brown is not such a situation. It's written in the wind.

You and Bobby Byrd have discussed this, huh?

Byrd's terrified he's going to lose in '06. He's not going to filibuster anybody.