'Nuclear option' bad for both sides Sam Says

Author: Sam Wilson

"Nuclear option" sounds too scary and exciting to mean changing the procedural rules in the Senate, but it means just that. Senate Majority Leader Frist is considering pushing the nuclear button to take away the possibility to filibuster judicial nominations.

Some quick background on this topic: Through five years President Bush has nominated just over 200 judges to federal courts. Ninety-five percent of those have had a confirmation vote before the whole Senate. In his first term, the Democrats, by threat of filibuster, blocked ten of those from the confirmation vote because they were extremely right wing.

At the start of his second term, he renominated seven of those ten. The Democrats think those seven are still unacceptable and are preventing a floor vote with the filibuster again. To counter this, Senator Frist threatened changing the Senate rules to prevent filibusters of judicial nominations, which is the "nuclear option." He will need 50 votes to do this.

The odds are though that nuking the rule will be very, very bad for Senator Frist and the GOP in general.

The only reason these seven judges matter so much to Senator Frist is because the religious right hates the judiciary - see: Terri Schiavo, legalizing sodomy, gay marriage and abortion - and they want to stack as many courts as possible with equally right wing judges.

The religious right, correctly or not, feels that they are responsible for GOP gains in Congress and Bush's reelection last fall. And on the issue of judges, they want to get paid or else they might sit out the next election. Maybe even by not supporting Senator Frist if he runs for president in 2008. This is a problem for the GOP, because it exposes just how controlled they are by people far outside the political mainstream. James Dobson just is not great at PR. Especially after the negative reaction to the GOP meddling in the Schiavo matter.

The Senate Democrats are threatening retaliation if Senator Frist goes "nookular." They will use Senate rules to force Democratic authored bills onto the floor for votes. These bills cover a wide range of topics including veteran's benefits, gas prices and the minimum wage. The point here is to force Republicans to have to vote against popular initiatives. They can have their judges, but they'll have to vote against veteran's benefits.

And this will hurt the GOP in another way. Its base consists largely of wealthy corporate types and Christian zealots. The former group really does not care at all if some right wing judge gets appointed to a federal court or not - they care about tax cuts, the bankruptcy bill, tax cuts and Social Security privatization. The Democrats will make sure that nothing these people want will come up for a vote. Senator Frist can have his judges, but it comes at the expense of pleasing the other side of his base.

And do not forget The Washington Post poll that found that 66 percent of the public opposes changing the rules, while a breathtaking 26 percent support it.

Senator Frist is trying to scare the Democrats into letting the judges through and he is about to get beat, badly.