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DLC | New Dem Dispatch | May 24, 2005
Nuclear Stand-Down
We are obviously delighted that a deal has been struck by 14 senators, seven from each party, which will prevent the Republican leadership of the U.S. Senate from changing the chamber's rules to require up-or-down majority-wins votes on every nominee to the federal judiciary. This gambit, known as the "nuclear option," would have all but consummated a GOP effort to turn the Senate into a carbon-copy of the party-line-run House, at the behest of social conservatives who forced this confrontation in anticipation of Supreme Court vacancies over the next three years. And moreover, successful deployment of the nuclear option would have pretty much shut down the Senate for the rest of the year.
The group of 14 included Democrats Robert Byrd (WV), Joe Lieberman (CT), Ben Nelson (NE), Mark Pryor (AR), Mary Landrieu (LA), Daniel Inouye (HI) and Ken Salazar (CO); and Republicans John McCain (AZ), John Warner (VA), Olympia Snowe (ME), Susan Collins (ME), Mike DeWine (OH), Lindsey Graham (SC), and Lincoln Chafee (RI). The deal they agreed to has a lot of sensible features. The seven Republicans made a firm commitment to vote against a nuclear maneuver for the rest of this Congress. The seven Democrats agreed to reserve filibusters against judicial nominees to "extraordinary" cases, which aptly captures the extraordinary nature of filibusters themselves. The two sides compromised on the Court of Appeals judges that would be subject to further filibusters, and although a couple of the "cleared" nominees have troubling records, letting them go is far preferable to permanently losing the filibuster tool against potential extremist Supreme Court candidates.
The one surprise in the deal was the language urging the Bush administration to return to the time-honored practice of consulting with both parties in the Senate before nominating federal judges. This is an important acknowledgment that the administration's abandonment of that time-honored tradition played a large role in creating the confrontation over judges to begin with.
In other words, the deal focused on basic principles of how judicial nominations should be made and reviewed, and that's the real victory for common sense over extremism.
And oh, how the extremists hate it. James Dobson of Focus on the Family called the deal a "betrayal by a cabal of Republicans and a great victory for united Democrats...http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=192&contentid=253343
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