Compromise on judges

Reuters reported U.S. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist offered a compromise in a battle over President Bush's judicial nominees, but a top Democrat called it a "wet kiss" to the right wing. Frist's proposal seeks to avert a showdown over Republican threats to change Senate rules in order to ban procedural roadblocks known as filibusters against judicial nominees.
Democrats have filibustered 10 of Bush's candidates whom they have deemed "right-wing ideologues," and have vowed retaliation in response to any ban on the filibuster, which permits unlimited debate.

Frist, the Senate majority leader, said he would "guarantee" up to 100 hours to debate any nominee to the appeals courts or U.S. Supreme Court. But Frist also said he would require that they all get a confirmation vote, meaning filibusters against these candidates would be banned. "It may not be a perfect proposal for either side, but it's the right proposal for America," said Frist as he stood in the Senate.

The Democrats complained that the Republicans blocked many of Clinton's judge. They did not do it by the filibuster, which the Democrats are doing to Bush's nominees, but rather by never releasing them from the Judiciary committee. They could do this because they were in the majority. Frist's proposal is extremely generous. It says that any President would be entitled to having their judicial nominees recieve an Up or Down vote by the entire Senate, after the Judicary committee had a reasonable amount of time to hold hearings, and it says that all judicial appointees would be entitled to up to 100 hours of debate on the floor of the senate, before receiving their up or down vote.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, called the proposal a "big wet kiss to the far right," which has pushed to ban judicial filibusters and get more conservatives on the bench.

This proves that Reid is not really upset at what happened to Clinton's judicial nominees, and that he is not interested in seeing that something like that never happens again, even if there is a Democratic President facing a Republican Senate. He just wants to do anything and everything he can to block Bush's conservative nominees. I hope the generouslty of Frist's proposal will convince any Republican senators that were having cold feet about the Constitutional / Nuclear Option, and that they will go ahead and approve the change to the rules that will allow Bush to get his nominees on the Appeals Court and the Supreme Court, when there are openings there, and that they will not have to agree to the rules change that would make it more difficult to block Liberal Judges should there ever be a Democratic President.

Yet Reid promised to study the multifaceted offer as Democrats and Republicans seek to find common ground and avoid what could be a nasty fight.

Joe Gandelman blogged Who wins? It's hard to say. But in the case of the sound bytes, Reid's "wet kiss" will have a far longer shelf life than Frist's pro-forma statement about his compromise being what's "right for America" — although many Democrats, centrists, independents and moderate Republicans might agree that Frist's agenda is "right."

The Washington Post, in an editorial, frames this battle this way:

The principles these more extreme combatants are upholding are not, upon close examination, impressive. Liberals are really arguing for the right to frustrate majority rule. Mr. Frist is really arguing that Democrats should not be able to do to Republican nominees what Republican senators only recently did to Democratic nominees, using a different set of procedural tricks. The partisanship on both sides has the unhealthy effect of further politicizing American attitudes toward the judiciary.

No what Frist is saying is that the President, regardless of which party, should have his/her judicial nominees receive an up or down vote regardless of what party controls the Senate. He is saying that the procedural tricks the Republicans used against Clinton AND the procedural tricks the Democrats are using against Bush, should not interfere with an up or down vote on all judicial nominees

CQ blogged All along during this battle, we have heard from Democrats that the GOP's rule change was an attack on free speech. Senator Byrd exclaimed on the Senate floor that free speech and debate would be "dead, dead, dead!" if Frist and the GOP put the Constitutional option in play. The Democrats have claimed this as an attack on the First Amendment as well as those "checks and balances" that they claim hinge on the use of the filibuster.

However, this offer by Frist cleverly flushes out the Democrats, although the Exempt Media will certainly miss this nuance. 100 hours of debate equals at least three weeks of Senate floor time, perhaps more, during a normal work schedule. It allows for every member to spend an hour discussing a nominee's shortcomings as well as their strengths. If the Democrats have evidence of unfitness for the nominees, they will have plenty of time to present it.

Why, then, don't they take the offer? Because they would have nothing specific to say, and 50 hours in which to say it. Reid and his caucus would look pretty foolish, repeating the same old tired clichés over and over again for hours on end. They aren't fighting for debate or free speech -- they want to avoid having to defend their opposition at all costs. The Democrats want to limit the debate to sound-bite sniping in the sympathetic press, not be granted scads of time that will ultimately expose the lack of evidence they have of any unfitness or impropriety on any of these nominees.

One cheer for Bill Frist, who finally has engaged in some public relations on behalf of the filibuster limitation. However, 100 hours of debate means that it will take seven months to get the seven nominees currently stalled by the Democrats into a position to get confirmed. That would push one or two off until 2006, and even that might change when a Supreme Court position opens up. Now that we've wasted almost four months of the new session, Frist's offer has a pretty severe limitation as to the number of appellate nominations that Bush can get through this Congress. Perhaps Frist's office needs a calculator before making these offers.

Frist knew that the Dems would never take him up on his offer. But the offer should look to wavering Republicans like he went the last mile trying to work things out, and that there was no alternative to the Constitutional/Nuclear option, and therefore we need to go ahead with that approach, which does not include the 100 hours of debate, and which does not prevent a Republican Senate from not even releasing Liberal Judges to the floor, should there ever be another Democratic President

Rick Edwards blogged Captain Ed thinks that Sen. Frist has cleverly "flushed out" the Democrats with his offer for 100 hours of debate on each of the president's judicial nominees before cutoff, but that perhaps the senator's office should get a calculator before tendering such offers.