Monday
An offer they couldn't refuse
I haven't had a chance to check other reactions to the "compromise" solution to avoid the nuclear option, but here's mine: Whichever members of the Democratic party agreed to this, presumably including Harry Reid, are the equivalent of a shop owner paying some "upstanding gentlemen" to make sure that there isn't any vandalism against or robberies of their shop in the future. They're paying into a protecting racket, and I hope they did it because they were 100% certain that Frist had the 50 votes to violate the rules and remove the filibsuter.. Otherwise it's totally shameful. The only saving grace could be which nominees have been guaranteed an up or down vote [Update preantepenultimate: Owen is one of them]. But pledging to not use the filibuster in anything except extraordinary circumstances, and creating the precedent that whichever nominees are not filibustered is an example of a circumstance which is not extraordinary, will most likely lead to quite negative results. This is just my gut reaction, as more news comes out it may change.
Update antepenultimate: This keeps getting worse, Janice Rogers Brown is eminently worth of a filibuster, but instead she gets a floor vote and essentially guaranteed passage from the President's followers.
Update penultimate: I still maintain my stance that a compromise in which one party agrees not to do something which violates the rules and the other gives up certain legitimate rights is not a good deal. I would honestly have preferred to see if Frist could get his fifty, and let the chips fall where they may. That said, a large cross-section of the Republican supporting blogs appear to be furious, which warms my little heart. Aaah, schadenfreude. I hope that all Democrats with more of a public voice than me (which is to say, all of them), continue to pretend that this is a victory and that the White House has suffered a blow. With the deal having already been made, it's the best strategic option, independent of its truth.
Update ultimate: Yglesias at Tapped links to a New Republic piece which does an excellent job of explaining the way in which the compromise isn't. Key sentence is: But by bracketing the debate between two right-wing extremes--confirm every nominee except for a handful or confirm every nominee through use of the nuclear option--the Republicans had won before they'd even begun. Read it all. For something completely different, see Matt's pretty powerful argument on why one type of health care reform won't work, along with the comments on that post.
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Update antepenultimate: This keeps getting worse, Janice Rogers Brown is eminently worth of a filibuster, but instead she gets a floor vote and essentially guaranteed passage from the President's followers.
Update penultimate: I still maintain my stance that a compromise in which one party agrees not to do something which violates the rules and the other gives up certain legitimate rights is not a good deal. I would honestly have preferred to see if Frist could get his fifty, and let the chips fall where they may. That said, a large cross-section of the Republican supporting blogs appear to be furious, which warms my little heart. Aaah, schadenfreude. I hope that all Democrats with more of a public voice than me (which is to say, all of them), continue to pretend that this is a victory and that the White House has suffered a blow. With the deal having already been made, it's the best strategic option, independent of its truth.
Update ultimate: Yglesias at Tapped links to a New Republic piece which does an excellent job of explaining the way in which the compromise isn't. Key sentence is: But by bracketing the debate between two right-wing extremes--confirm every nominee except for a handful or confirm every nominee through use of the nuclear option--the Republicans had won before they'd even begun. Read it all. For something completely different, see Matt's pretty powerful argument on why one type of health care reform won't work, along with the comments on that post.
