Reverse engineering intelligence gathered from the
Democrat blog sites, informed by the report of a delightfully
frantic phone call by Ted Kennedy to the so-called netroots with
regard whom among his colleagues he doubts, the Alito filibuster
fight centers around eleven Doubtful Democrats.
The Doubtful Democrats are Pryor and Lincoln of Arkansas,
Cantwell and Murray of Washington, Baucus of Montana, Dorgan and
Conrad of North Dakota, Bayh of Indiana, Lautenberg and Menendez
of New Jersey, Lieberman of Connecticut.
Breaking this eleven down, there are six in red states and seven
in blue states.
As of this moment, Nelson of Red Nebraska and Byrd of
Red West Virginia and Johnson of Red South Dakota are pledged to
vote with the GOP for cloture. (Add to this the most likely and all
but announced, determined, certain cloture votes of Democrats
Dorgan and Conrad of Red North Dakota. )
The summary is that at this moment there are now five
reliable Red State Democrats to join fifty-five Republicans for
cloture.
The summary also is that Team Cloture cannot lose any
of the fifty-five GOP senators unless some other of the doubtful
Dems defect.
The summary also is that these are most tight
numbers, and that when Ted Kennedy told the Dem callers to
concentrate on Republicans Snowe of Blue Maine and Chafee of Blue
Rhode Island, he knew where the seam is in the Frist managed
cloture vote.
This is not a done deal. Repeat, not done. It is a
likely GOP win, but it is not an easy win; and Bill Frist will not
be comforted until he hears from some three or four of the Doubtful
Democrats that they support cloture.
topics:
NATO
