From FilibusterFrist.com:
“The judges that now stand to join the federal judiciary, what of them? Many Americans consider them extreme or unqualified; enough senators to sustain a filibuster saw them in the same light. If they garner approval, it will be nominal - not because of their merits. They will pass through the Senate only because the Senate had a greater concern - its own institutional integrity - and were ready to accept the lesser evil. These judges may sit on the bench for the rest of their lives, but they will have been allowed on it only because of the threat of the nuclear option. How large is the difference between acting illegally and using the threat of illegal action to achieve your ends? Certainly, there is a difference, but it is too small to comfort us entirely. We have not crossed that crucial threshold into illegality but we rammed up against it again and again for the last month, and it has been scarred. We shall not forget this shame.”
Also, the Deal text includes a message to Bush about the proper meaning of Advice and Consent. To paraphrase, Democrats (duh) and moderate Republicans (oh, there you are!) just told Bush to cool it with the divisive political games. You better believe that the Administration is worried that it may have slapped its friends around a bit too much this time. His moderate “friends” are starting to realize that they never seem to get that promised reach around…
~The Stuffed Tiger
May 24th, 2005 at 1:13 pm
My larger point, I guess, that you keep missing is that I don’t really believe that your “moderate Republicans” exist.
Sure, there are people like McCain, Snow, Chafee, Collins, and Graham who have some moderate positions. But how can we rely on them to push against the Party base and Party piggy bank? We haven’t seen it in the past and I think that only because this is such an egregious situation are we seeing these so-called moderates do this. Keep in mind, these are Senators who have voted for the Patriot Act, against abortion rights, and against adequate and reasonable funding for our troops, in favor of whatever the Bush clan puts forth.
If anything, we should be expecting the moderate threads of the Republican Party to get even further phased out. Don’t delude yourself, seven senators does not an internal opposition movement make. Come and talk to me when twenty of the fifty-five and one hundred and fifty congressmen are banding together to fight Frist, Santorum and Bush.
Philo