Frist Doesn't Have The Votes

by Chris Bowers, Sat May 14, 2005 at 01:29:03 PM EDT

For those not following this story closely, ABC provides a useful summary: Seven Republican senators will determine the outcome of a showdown this week between the president and Congress and a minority within it over who is going to shape the federal courts.

Barring any unforeseen developments, these are the lawmakers in the make-or-break position when it comes to deciding whether to allow a Senate minority to block a president's nominees for the federal bench.

The senators are Susan Collins of Maine, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, John Warner of Virginia, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John Sununu of New Hampshire.

At issue is an effort by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to ban judicial filibusters. The Senate's Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, wants the ability to block nominees for the Supreme Court and lower courts whom his party views as outside the legal mainstream.

The seven Republicans have not committed publicly to supporting either Senate leader.

All 44 Senate Democrats, joined by independent Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont and three Republicans, have said they oppose curtailing a Senate minority's ability to block the president's judicial nominees with just 41 votes in the 100-member Senate.

Frist, R-Tenn., has 45 of the Senate's 55 Republicans on his side.

Then again, of course Frist does not have the votes, otherwise he would have already held the vote. Further, if he had the votes, what would be the point of bringing the Noise Machine to bear on this ridiculous, baseless slander against Harry Reid?

In a related story, the vast majority of Americans don't give a rat's ass:

The heated debate over the filibuster rule in the U.S. Senate is a low-salience issue to the American public, almost two-thirds of whom say they are not following it closely. I am not saying that this issue is unimportant, but we should remain aware that this is not something voters care about. Whoever "wins" this fight will win on their own, without much fanfare, and with no real electoral implications (except, of course, in the Republican Presidential primaries).

This story is purely for the bases, purely for the hyper-engaged. We fight it only because we feel it is the right thing to do.

Tags: Senate 2006 (all tags)

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Disagree

There will be political implications from whatever happens. People will notice what this all means once it goes down. How much of a lasting effect will it have, I don't know. But it will effect the consciousness of the American voter, even if only slightly.

I feel each one of these religious battles by the religious right and the Republican party is a building block. Schaivo, this charade, banning books, then next thing, and then the next thing. It will all add up in the end. How it effects the elecotrate, I don't know. But this will have an effect.

by Eric11 2005-05-14 02:55PM | 0 recs

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if it's in the Post it'll go to FoxNews any

minute now. they'll "report" on it being in the Post (and maybe as internet buzz, or buzz in DC) in order to justify it as news. then their pundit shows can dwell on it. and the Post bit also works as lipstick on the pig of a story in the hopes of baiting the other cable news channels to start repeating the GOP talking points.

by benchcoat 2005-05-14 03:17PM | 0 recs

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Maine & NH

Maine and NH got whacked on the base closing list. That may have an impact on what Sununu and Collins do; they may not want to buck Bush if they think it will help them keep their base open.

by nascardem 2005-05-14 05:20PM | 0 recs

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Re: Maine &amp; NH

(begin smugness) welp. the big base
near me was on the block and it
stays. methinks johnny isakson did
a great job. specially since
has, like, about 3 planes a minute
landing and taking off for supply
runs to iraq. (end smugness)

senators argue for their states
interests , its a nice, cool environment
where there's not serious amount of
wierdness. in fact, its really not
too partisan a place to be.

methinks that if frist loses,
he will go as radioactive as delay.

The goal seems to be to enforce
the party line vote - someone inside
the party is trying to convince
the fence sitters that "up or down"
is the way to go.

I say this:
Ever seen that motion you can make
with your hand? up.. down.. up .. down.

Thats what the gop is doing. and
what makes me even more mad is that
this whole monkey circus is going
on and we're supposed to be covering
expensive salaries while the most
expensive government in the history
of our country is fighting the most
expensive war we've ever fought.
And losing damnit!

I don't care about a thing right
now other than winning that war.
Lets give the kurds something they
can take to the bank, even tho
they're a minority.

Checks and balances!

by turnerbroadcasting 2005-05-14 10:10PM | 0 recs

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Snow and Sununu are lost...

....what can Cheney do, close Portsmouth Naval Shipyard twice?

Junta Boy's owners pushed too soon. Now they have no carrot, and have already used the stick.

by Davis X Machina 2005-05-14 06:18PM | 0 recs

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The carrot

would presumably be the prospect of opening refineries on the bases.

I don't know how well that will sell, but it's certainly the kind of pork that the people can get behind, considering how approval ratings track gas prices.

by catastrophile 2005-05-14 08:04PM | 0 recs

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Re: The carrot

The people living in Portsmouth would throw a fit if they proposed an oil refinery on the navy yards location. A major part of the city's economy is tourism, and refinery revenue would hardly make up for the business lost.

They put the nuke plant in Seabrook because it was as far from Portsmouth as possible down the New Hampshire coast.

by Flynnieous 2005-05-16 07:23AM | 0 recs

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This isn't quite over yet.

From the standpoint of sheer cynical politics, I think it comes down to how those senators view Frist's chances in 2008. If they think he's going to be a strong candidate, they might want to toe the line now, maybe get a chit with the guy. Frist isn't completely without bargaining leverage.

On the other hand...

The real key is what happens with the religious extremists who are driving this issue. If it passes, they are running out of things to keep them fired up. They'll have their judges, then what will they want? What issues can they push without creating some kind of backlash, and a genuine (and well founded) fear in the country that it is being run by theocrat wannabes like Dobson and Robertson and Falwell? They have to have something to keep the faithful fired up. They are running what amounts to big businesses; they need a motivator to keep people coming to the spiritual workplace and giving their all. A further assault on abortion rights? Almost guaranteed political poison everywhere except in the South and Plains.

People like Snowe and Collins have to be bright enough to see who would be on the chopping block if the country starts seeing things completely out of whack. It's not going to be the winger congresspeople and their bootlickers (like Frist); it's going to be the moderates from blue states who suffer, just as the moderate Dems have been suffering in the red areas for 20 years now.

It's a beautiful thing, really, seeing the pendulum swing about as far as it can, waiting to see it start swinging back the other way. Go Frist! Keep sucking up to the nutcases who have a stranglehold on your party. Be the Republican version of George McGovern. Because just as McGovern's nomination and defeat signaled the end of New Deal liberalism and far left activism, a Frist nomination would likely signal the end of theocratic conservatism. And it's about time.

by KD 2005-05-14 07:09PM | 0 recs

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Re: This isn't quite over yet.

I learned a lesson from chess that I'd
like to share with you.

Never play your game hoping the other
guy will simply make a mistake.

Get on the horn, call your
senators.

by turnerbroadcasting 2005-05-14 10:05PM | 0 recs

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Re: This isn't quite over yet.

In backgammon, sometimes you get to the point where you are so far behind you have to play what is known as a "back game." Basically, you adopt a defensive position and wait for an unfortunate roll of the dice from your opponent to allow you to counterattack.

Politics is very much like a game of backgammon, except you can't bear off in politics. Instead the game goes on and on, and eventually, that bad roll of the dice has to happen. I think we're at about that stage.

by KD 2005-05-15 06:20AM | 0 recs

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Never thought I'd live to see...

the words 'bright enough' and '[Senator Susan] Collins' in the same sentence.

Almost guaranteed political poison everywhere except in the South and Plains.

If the GOP can use God, gays, and guns to turn the rest of the country into a virtual South and Plains fast enough on the one hand, and take advantage of the representational bounce from the growing actual South and Plains on the other, it may not matter.

For everything else, there's Diebold.

by Davis X Machina 2005-05-15 06:37AM | 0 recs

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Re: Never thought I'd live to see...

The assumption underlying this is that the rest of the country are sheep, and can be pushed in any direction the wind blows. True to an extent, but people do have core values, and those values are differentiated by region in this country.

Few people really believe abortion rights are threatened, so people who are nominally in favor of abortion, but for whom abortion isn't a hot button issue, don't weight it too heavily in their political calculations. I think we're getting to the point where abortion rights are being threatened (along with other things, like the separation between church and state), and that means people are going to have to take this into account when making political decisions.

Take a look at electoral maps from the turn of the last century involving William Jennings Bryan. It was basically the South and Plains against the rest of the country. It's been similar throughtout the country's history, but the South/Plains bloc isn't quite as isolated now as it needs to be if the more progressive parts of the country are to win.

As a side note, it is a particularly amusing coincidence that it was Bryan who prosecuted the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. Bryan "won" that case (his win was later overturned on appeal), but the publicity of it was devastating to the anti-evolutionary movement. Perhaps history, if not God, has a sense of irony.

by KD 2005-05-15 08:49AM | 0 recs

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The Dems can seize the publics attention on this

That last quote is the clue. Most of the public doesn't care about this issue. If the Democrats were to simply talk about the filibuster issue in the same language as those "don't give a rat's ass" voters then they should come out smelling like roses. All Reid has to do is ask why the Republicans are working so hard on an issue that is of such little concern to the vast majority of the American people and why the Republicans are derailing the important business of the Senate in order to appease a fringe element of their base.

The Democrats may win this fight on the procedural issues alone. But if they don't frame it in these wider terms than the public could quite possibly blame them equally for the whole mess. I note as support for this assertion that many of the polls on Congress of late rank BOTH Democrats and Republicans equally bad.

by Chris Andersen 2005-05-14 09:42PM | 0 recs

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The count

Before the senate floor, a move by Sen. Frist to do away with checks and balances:

Voting NAY:

Dem+1 45
GOP 3 public stance inferred
--------
48

Voting YAY!!

GOP: 46

This puts MIA 9 senators.
The min. Threshold, accounting above,
is now 7.

McCain went into party meeting last
week and stood up and said, the democrats
want to cut a deal. Nobody listened.

Its going to the floor next week.
I would expect we should be very
focussed in whom we contact.

For example, in my state, John Isakson
stood up and gave this amazing speech
last year about how great the filibuster
is. I sure, sure hope he doesn't have
to vote against it, esp. when we're
accounting that he's speaking about
the spread of democracy in Afghanistan
and Iraq. The war plays large in Ga.

by turnerbroadcasting 2005-05-14 10:04PM | 0 recs

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Political junkies = early adopters

The claim this will have no implication of elections ignores the fact that political junkies play a similar role in elections to what early adopters play in Christmas retail sales.

The early adopters alter who buys what. So, getting the early adopters on your side brings a number of latecomers along with them.

I believe the same thing happens in US politics. Looking at the Kerry-Bush election, GOP early adopters won their fight, and positioned Kerry as a sissy flip-flopper long before anyone was interested in the election.

That victory was hardly isolated. It spread, and characterized the entire campaign.

Right now, our goal in this fight for early adopters has to be characterizing the 2006 election as a fight for ethics, fairness, and the American way.

by jcjcjc 2005-05-14 10:08PM | 0 recs

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Frist doesn't have the votes

Looks to me as if he has the votes. Look at the Bolton nomination. Many of the same senators were on that committee, and voiced an objection, only to end up voting for him. It doesn't matter if Voinovitch votes against him on the floor, the committee was where it mattered. And Bolton is hated by many of their bases.

Precisely because their base isn't terribly interested in the courts, the centrist gops are more likely to side with their leadership.

by Hong Kong Chevy 2005-05-15 12:39AM | 0 recs

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For Everything Else, There's Diebold.

(That's what David X Machina says above.)

The public should really get it's act together. The issue is huge, in case they don't know. (And we do have to get past Diebold!) Consider the thread I began here.

by blues 2005-05-16 04:26AM | 0 recs