The American Spectator

I don’t get it. From George Neumayr to George Will, and beyond, all except one (Lisa Fabrizio) of the conservative pundits I admire most seem not to recognize the massive win for the President engineered by people such as Senators Graham, DeWine and Warner. (I don’t count McCain, Chafee, Snowe, or Collins because I doubt they’re smart enough to know what they’ve done to their fellow liberals across the isle — nor is their vote necessary to get the President’s judicial nominees confirmed, or the rest of his agenda enacted.)

The truth of the matter is that every single one of the President’s pending judicial nominees will now almost certainly get an up or down vote; and all will likely be confirmed. This will occur simply by Senator Frist calling each nomination to the floor for a vote, letting the leftists rant a couple days, calling for and getting cloture, and then counting the votes. End of story.

No nominee will have been thrown overboard, nor will any future nominee likely be defeated without an up or down vote because that would require three of the seven Democrat signatories of the deal to join a filibuster, which they are unlikely to do because, as Senator Graham said, the three nominees they have specifically certified as not “extraordinary” in the “circumstances” sense are less (or is it more?) not “extraordinary” than the other five pending. Thus, the seven Democrats (with the possible exception of Klansman Byrd) cannot and will not now permit a filibuster of any of these other five. And, for these very same reasons, a filibuster of any future judicial nominees during this Congress is very unlikely.

The tactic was brilliant, not only because all the President’s judicial nominees will now almost certainly get up or down votes, but because the leftists in the Senate have been rendered far less likely to filibuster anything else — John Bolton’s nomination, Social Security reform, etc. Effectively, the radical, Democrat senators have been neutered for this Congress and probably far beyond because, without the filibuster, all they have left are their normal empty rhetoric, lies, invective, and character assassination. That will no longer be enough to accomplish anything except, perhaps, to recruit a “useful idiot” such as a sniveling Senator Voinovich.