The American Spectator

p> WHEELING br> Re: The Prowler’s Here’s the Deal : /p> p>What’s done is done. I can understand the motivations of some of the Senators. John McCain likes the limelight and wants payback for the South Carolina 2000 primary. Lincoln Chafee, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are liberals and don’t want other liberals saying bad things about them at the dinner parties. John Warner is upset that after all his long service to the party the Junior Senator from Virginia gets all the attention from the Republican base (New York has a similar pairing on the Dem side). But Mike DeWine and Lindsey Graham? I don’t know why they did this. They seem to believe they can back out of this agreement on their own discretion if they think the Dems have broken their part of the agreement. All I can say to these two Senators is Mike and Lindsey “you’ve been punked!” br> — Geoff Bowden br> Kalamazoo, Michigan /p>

You say potayto and I say potahto! The deal is one that perpetuates a practice that should not be perpetuated. It was struck by people who revere themselves and their legislative body more than they revere their country. Making a majority and a minority equal destroys the fabric of democracy, and in doing so, lowers the public’s confidence in an already flawed system. The defection (I almost typed “defecation” — how about that for a Freudian slip?) of the Republican senators is, in reality, a surrender to the MSM. Knowing that they could make themselves be presented as “statesmanlike” in the major dailies was a temptation too juicy for these towering egos to resist.

Perhaps the only good to come from this debacle is the fact that Senator McCain has most likely scuttled his presidential aspirations. I for one certainly hope so. He has an enviable resume that displays his physical courage, but it also displays his massive ego. In my opinion, the latter cancels the former. As a national figure, he stands for self-aggrandizement with a capital “self.” As for the others, I am not familiar with any except Senator DeWine and Senator Voinovich, who happen, to my dismay, to be my senators.

Whether the Republican Party is able to make gold out of dross is not the issue here. Rather, unity, support for a sitting president from one’s own party, and coming down on the right side of the present conflict between those who would have our laws made by judges, and those who would have the people make them; these are the issues in play here. The seven Republican senators who offered up their majority status, whether out of honest belief that it was the right thing to do, or out of a cynical desire to curry favor with the liberal establishment, deserve to leave the Senate, either for their poor judgment or for their nihilistic cynicism. I would be willing to wager that not one of them can look me in the eye and tell me that the judicial candidates who will be dumped are unfit for the appointments to which President Bush nominated them.

p>Compromise is certainly a vital ingredient in politics, however, there are some things which are too important to be compromised. Whether we live in a representative democracy or a judiciocracy is much too important an issue to be compromised. And these seven should have known that!