[Mb-civic] (sorry about this but....) Bush and Frist Got What They Wanted

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

I have received emails from MoveOn, envirogroups, Barbara Boxer 
and others about how great it was that the Senate compromised to 
avoid the Nuclear Option.  Sorry to rain on the parade, but it seems to 
me the following take is more accurate.  I always think its better to 
acknowledge the brutal facts and then move on than to pretend....(and 
if me and R Kuttner are wrong that's a bonus!)

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0525-20.htm

Published on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 by the Boston Globe
Bush and Frist Got What They Wanted
by Robert Kuttner
 

The Wasington press corps loves the conceit that polarization is what 
ails American politics and that bipartisan moderation will save the day. 
The high drama of the ''nuclear option" averted by brave moderates 
from both parties fits the script perfectly.

In the conventional account, Republican leader Bill Frist, tired of court 
nominees being denied a floor vote by obstructionist Democrats, 
threatened to scrap the filibuster rule. Just hours before this nuclear 
option was to be exercised, 14 moderates of both parties, after 
marathon negotiations, heroically fashioned a compromise in which 
just three controversial nominees get a floor vote, and the filibuster is 
preserved.

Several press accounts had Frist isolated and humiliated, and right-
wing groups furious. The only problem is that this happy spin is almost 
totally wrong. Consider what actually happened.

By threatening what amounted to a parliamentary coup d'etat, Frist got 
nearly everything he wanted. A rules change requires a two-thirds vote. 
Frist's ''nuclear option" would have had the leadership rule from the 
chair that the filibuster can be scrapped for judicial nominees; then a 
simple majority of 51 senators would have upheld the parliamentary 
ruling. End of filibuster.

Faced with bad publicity for this show of crude force, several 
Republicans looked for a face-saver that would still preserve the 
substantive result -- confirmation of extremist nominees. They and 
Frist won. This was no mutiny against the Senate leader; it was merely 
a change of tactic.

What does the vaunted compromise actually do? First, it guarantees 
an up-or-down floor vote on three of the most reactionary judges ever 
to come before the Senate: Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryor, and 
Priscilla Owen. It was Democratic resistance to these appellate 
nominees that caused Frist to go nuclear in the first place. He and 
George W. Bush won. The three judges are now likely to be confirmed, 
and other extremist nominees will keep coming.

Second, the deal commits the GOP to relent on the plan to scrap the 
filibuster, but only for now. Frist is free to revive the nuclear option any 
time he likes, say, when the first Bush nominee to the Supreme Court 
comes before the Senate. Frist can hold this threat over the heads of 
Democrats, who are committed to minimize the use of filibusters.

Frist, Bush, and the Republican propaganda machine have been 
expressing outrage that Bush has been denied a handful of court 
nominees. The fact is that Republicans denied Bill Clinton far more 
court nominees, not by filibustering, but by refusing to let nominations 
out of committee. And Clinton tended to appoint moderates in an effort 
to appease Republicans, while Bush's nominees are mostly far-right 
conservatives.

Frist needed 50 votes plus Vice President Cheney as tie-breaker to 
sustain his threatened parliamentary coup.

In the end, seven of the 55 Senate Republicans decided to pursue this 
''compromise," leaving him two votes short. But if these Republicans 
were genuinely moderates, they would not just be providing this 
parliamentary fig leaf; they would be voting against confirmation of 
these extremist nominees when they come up for a floor vote.

If you want to look for profiles in courage, see whether ''moderate" 
Republicans like Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, John 
McCain of Arizona, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island actually 
oppose any of these nominees. For the most part, these people 
posture moderate and then do Bush's bidding.

The nuclear option is a very fitting analogy. Throughout the Cold War, 
the two super powers never used nuclear weapons. It was the threat to 
use them that produced the power. This is what Frist has done. He did 
not have to blow up a Senate norm, and he got his way just the same.

This week's nuclear compromise was no victory for moderation. It was 
just the latest in a series of salami tactics, where the right takes some 
now and comes back for more later.

In addition to the myth of bipartisan moderation, another myth is that 
the country wants moderate policies but that both parties are at fault 
for moving to the extremes. In fact, the Democrats have moved 
steadily to the center on issues of social outlay, progressive taxation, 
and deregulation, while Bush has worked to energize his party's most 
extremist interest groups.

If the country is not getting moderate policies, it's because the Bush 
administration has shown that if you play real hardball, you can enact 
policies far to the right of what most voters want.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect.

© 2005 Boston Globe

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