The Center Holds: Challenges For Bush

By DemFromCT

The next-day analysis is seeping in. Like Presidential debates, the instant punditry (including ours) is less important than the picture framed by the media over the next three days. I was especially struck by the analysis in the LA Times, because it strikes a note played here before:

Still, the agreement — in which seven moderate Republicans broke ranks from their party and joined seven moderate Democrats — is an unusual challenge to Bush and GOP leaders who until now have commanded remarkable party discipline on a wide range of issues. It throws a rare obstacle in the Republicans' steady march toward the overarching goal of the Bush presidency: to parlay the party's slim majority in the country into major changes in policy and in government institutions for years to come.
...
Illustrating the pressure on Frist and other Senate Republicans, Gary Bauer, a conservative activist and unsuccessful candidate for president in 2000, immediately denounced the deal as a sellout.

"The Republicans who lent their names to this travesty have undercut their president as well as millions of their most loyal voters," he said. "Shame on them all."

But a Republican strategist familiar with White House thinking said conservatives should look at the bright side of the compromise: It delivers votes on three stalled nominees and leaves open the possibility of returning to the nuclear option.

That assumes the nominees pass (Lindsay Graham predicts one will not). In fact that last bit... the reaction of social conservatives and the Religious Right... got a story of its own.

Conservative groups that spent millions of dollars preparing for a Senate fight over use of the filibuster to block votes on President Bush's judicial nominees reacted with outrage Monday night at a compromise that averted the showdown.

Several furious conservative activists accused Republican senators who supported the compromise of selling out Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn), saying they wanted nothing short of guaranteed up-or-down votes on every judicial nominee.

"Unfortunately, 14 senators are allowed to speak for all of America, and they're able to pick and choose the nominees they find acceptable," said Lanier Swann, director of government relations for Concerned Women for America. She predicted that senators would face political fallout from both sides of the issue.

More on Frist's headaches (poor fellow) from the Hook and Brownstein combo:

Indeed, moderate Republicans in the House are expected to mount an unusual show of force today and vote for a bill liberalizing Bush's policy on stem cell research — despite his veto threat.

The judicial compromise also was a remarkable challenge to both party's leaders — especially to Frist, who believed he had the votes to approve the filibuster ban until the bipartisan compromise was announced.

By spearheading the drive to ban the judicial filibusters, Frist has been applauded by evangelical conservatives whose support he will need if he seeks his party's presidential nomination in 2008. It remains to be seen whether the senator's efforts will translate into strong support for his candidacy in that community — or whether activists will hold it against him for being unable to keep party moderates in line and deliver the ban.

More interesting comments on Frist (and McCain) come from the Decembrist (Mark Schmitt):

So, if this all sounds like rationalization because of the pure power-politics implications of a deal, maybe it is. Because those implications are really something. Frist put himself out there with the religious right, made this a matter in which some of them chose to speak in "the prophetic voice," from which no compromise is possible. The mistake Frist made was a small one at the time, and he probably didn't even know he was making it. But by enlisting these outside groups as partners and permanent allies, he cut off his own freedom of maneuver. When he finally realized that a critical mass of his own caucus did not want to blow up the Senate, he was trapped by outside forces. Now he's utterly ruined. John McCain and Lindsay Graham are setting the agenda in the Senate, while to the religious right, Frist is not a martyr to principle, but just an ineffectual leader, a guy who talks big but can't deliver.

In the context of Social Security, CAFTA, stem cells (potential Bush losses), second term lame duck-itis and a 55-44-1 Senate, I don't see, despite any good face the WH puts on it, how this is good for Bush's agenda or Dobson's. From the NY Times:

But Monday evening's partial victory was hardly a display of overwhelming political strength. Beyond the judicial nominations, administration officials and their outside advisers recognize that the convergence of so many high-stakes issues in such a short period will shape public perceptions of Mr. Bush's power at a time when his approval ratings are already lackluster and his signature domestic initiative, remaking Social Security, is in trouble.

To some degree, the confluence of disparate issues is coincidence. But in another way it is the logical consequence of Mr. Bush's decision to expend his political capital, as he put it immediately after his re-election, to push through initiatives that he suggested voters had endorsed by putting him back in the White House.

From his push to add investment accounts to Social Security to his nomination of John R. Bolton to be the United States envoy to the United Nations to his opposition to pork barrel spending in the Senate's highway construction bill, Mr. Bush has been assertive and even provocative in probing the limits of his own power.

Bolton's nomination becaomes all the more interesting now that the moderates have had their taste of power and influence. Enraging Gary Bauer and his allies is both fun and easy to do. Perhaps they'll try it more often.

Comments

[DemFromCT]

If Brown fails, as many have noted, the deal is all the sweeter. But seeing is believing, and no one is predicting this is anything but a temporary respite in the culture wars to come.

[DemFromCT]

Good line from EJ Dionne in his "Specter must be pleased" column:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and other Republicans who backed the nuclear option hurt themselves badly with shameful rhetoric suggesting that murder and mayhem, not honest differences, were at the heart of this battle.

Thus did Frist accuse the Democrats of wanting to "kill, to defeat, to assassinate" President Bush's nominees. Oh, my. That's what comes out when a Princeton graduate plays the role of counterfeit populist in pandering to the Christian right.

[The Heretik]

Hard to see this as anything but a short term victory for Republicans. Worse yet for Democrats. Bodies Bleeding Everywhere

Added this article to expanding links. Thanks for the great work.

[KdmFromPhila]

Maybe I'm naive but I find this deal impossible to judge. We don't know, and probably never will know for sure, whether Reid had/could have had 51 votes. If he didn't, then the compromise doesn't look bad. In fact, I rather doubt that Specter would have sided with him; he owes Bush, Frist and Santorum too much.
To me, there are 2 key questions: 1. what happens to the three noxious nominees?; and 2. is this deal the first or only time that the Republican moderates will act independently of the White House? A few years ago, some of them were opposed to the President's plan to make the tax cuts permanent; will they now start to part ways with Bush on a few more issues?

[DemFromCT]

KdmFromPhila: all true. Grahams's comment is very important. But while this isn't victory for Dems, it is a major defeat for Frist, though. Watch how this is played. In De Wine's Ohio (Columbus Dispatch - subscription):

Emerging from a private meeting shortly after 7 p.m., seven Republicans and seven Democrats announced they would oppose a bid by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, RTenn., to engineer a major change in Senate rules that would have prevented a minority of senators from blocking the confirmation of a federal-judgeship nominee.

By doing so, DeWine and the other Republicans denied Frist and his White House allies a chance to dramatically reshape the age-old Senate custom known as a filibuster, which is a tactic to delay a floor vote. Because it takes 60 senators to end a filibuster, the rule permits 41 senators to prevent a floor vote on any nominee they oppose, essentially giving the minority the power to kill a nomination.

But in return, the seven Democrats broke from their party’s leadership to hand Bush at least a partial victory in a protracted confirmation battle. The Democrats agreed to permit floor votes on three of Bush’s most controversial and conservative nominees.

That means the seven Democrats are virtually guaranteeing the confirmation of Priscilla R. Owen to the U.S. 5 th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, Janice R. Brown to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and William H. Pryor to the 11 th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

In a final compromise that sealed the deal, the Republicans said they would not object to Democrats’ support of a filibuster to block two other Bush nominees — William Myers to the 9 th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Henry Saad to the 6 th U.S. Circuit Court. Those nominations likely will fail.

I think Frist had the votes, but we'll never know. nonetheless, it'll take more than this to consider this more than a loss averted.

[DemFromCT]

Thanks, Heretik. We don't need to agree on every point to agree that following the news is important. Thanks for the links.

[KdmFromPhila]

Thanks for your response DemFromCt. I suspect that you are right(that Reid didn't have the votes or doubted that he would get the last 2.) If that's the case (and there's no way he would say that publicly) then this is a bigger win then it looks to some of us. If my speculation is accurate, then it's only a win on one issue, but when you have only 45 of 100 votes, you won't win often.

[emptywheel]

I find this humorous:

"Unfortunately, 14 senators are allowed to speak for all of America, and they're able to pick and choose the nominees they find acceptable," said Lanier Swann, "Rather than having a small minority of religious fundamentalists dictate the morals [sic] and behavior to the rest of the country, the way God [sic] wants it to be" Lanier continued.

Graham has said two things, I think, which may be related. First, that one of the three won't get through (although I'm beginning to think that'll be Pryor, because yes votes on Owen and Brown were early features of any compromise--I want it to be Brown, but Pryor is more of a compromise). And, that Bolton's nomination will be a slam dunk. I said yesterday that I hope the Gang of 14 plus moderates like Murkowski, Specter, and Hagel could be appealed to on the same principles of Senate oversight in question here to deny Bolton the position. But I'm less optimistic right now. We know Holy Joe wants Bolton. So he'd be really happy to throw Bolton into the compromise as a deal-sweetener.

Would I switch Bolton for Brown though? I guess so.

[Steve]

Brown has a lot more negatives than Pryor though, and is going on a more important court, so we'll see. If Pryor gets voted down, it would be a huge blow to the President's recess appointment power. I don't expect it though.

[demtom]

Okay, so I bailed out of here about 9:30 last night, still queasy, though taking DHinMI and DemfromCT's posts to heart. Now that I've slept on it:

1) We'll never know what the ultimate vote on nukes would have been; we're in the position of lawyers who settled a case just before jury deliberation. If they were going to convict, any deal is great; if acquittal was in the air, you cheated yourself. I hold to the position that, in the end, enough Senators would have blinked at the radicalness of the step...but then, I never thought the House would vote impeachment, so don't go by me.

2) If one of the odious three is going to be voted down (and Lindsey Graham's status as honest broker depends on it), then it's really a good deal for our side -- winning 3 of 5 agreed upon, rather than 2, tilts the balance our way.

3) If Bolton's confirmed or not, I think we win. A confirmed Bolton won't be like a judge, who disappears after confirmation and does his/her damage in the shadows, in collaboration with others. His actions -- especially if he's confirmed by a paper-thin margin -- will be scrutinized daily, and his past character suggests he'll do much to embarrass the administration. If part of what we want is clear illustration of the damage BushCo. is inflicting on the world, Bolton at the UN could do the job in the same way a Cheney cheat-ruling on nukes would have. (Not to discount the potential damage to the world community, but we're dealing with a smorgasbord of bad choices as long as this crowd holds office)

4) I still think there's a slim chance this compromise will turn out to be Munich. As Brownstein points out, the Graham understanding relies on Bush changing his M.O. vis a vis the Senate -- and Bush, the most bull-headed president I've seen in my approaching-long lifetime, would rather eat excrement than admit error. I keep hearing James Woolcott's phrase, that anyone who ever gave Bush benefit of doubt lived to regret it. But I'm willing to wait and see.

[DemFromCT]

demtom: see my comments to RonK's subsequent post (from the Note):

7. When — and if — the deal falls apart. What happens to Brett Cavanaugh and William Haynes. (We checked this morning with tippy-top Republican and Democratic aides, and Democrats insist there's a side deal to drop them while Republicans think there's no deal at all. Do Democrats have reason to believe that the two won't get out of committee?)

Interpret that!!