Santorum reads nuke polls

Alexander Bolton, former assistant to David Corn at The Nation (News and analysis on politics and culture from the left) magazine, wrote in The Hill that Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), a leading advocate of the “nuclear option” to end the Democrats’ filibuster of judicial nominees, is privately arguing for a delay in the face of adverse internal party polls.

Details of the polling numbers remain under wraps, but Santorum and other Senate sources concede that, while a majority of Americans oppose the filibuster, the figures show that most also accept the Democratic message that Republicans are trying to destroy the tradition of debate in the Senate.

Joe Gandelman blogged The GOP could get the votes and win on this. But if it does win it could lose a lot more in the longrun. And if it wins this vote there's an excellent chance the Senator will be sending resumes out come November, and probably land some nice, new job as a highly-paid lobbyist.

James Joyner blogged The Republicans are right on the issue--the vast majority of Americans support the idea that the president's nominees should get an up-or-down vote--but they've done a poor job of making their case. The Democrats have tradition on their side here and they've bolstered their position by getting the pejorative description "nuclear option" to stick.

While I disagree with Kevin Drum that the Republicans have "overreached," he's right that they have made numerous tactical errors and have been heavyhanded (not to mention hamfisted) in handling certain issues, notably the whole Tom Delay mess. Markos Zuniga is right, too, that Santorum's tight re-election polls are as relevant to this as the fillibuster polls.

Ed Morrissey is disgusted with the Republicans for having "taken a significant mandate from the November 2004 election to break the unprecedented filibusters on judicial nominations and turned it into a liability." It's not clear, though, how much of a mandate on this issue the GOP had. While the die hards among us found it important, I'm not aware of any evidence that it was a major factor in Bush's win over Kerry, let alone in the 435 House races or 34 Senate races in 2004. Such things are decidely inside baseball.

Paul Mirengoff hits the nail on the head:

[P]oll-based fear should not deter the Republicans in this instance. It also occurs to me that if the Republicans could make the Democrats actually filibuster Owen or Brown for an extended period, the public would conclude (a) that the Dems have had their opportunity for full debate and/or (b) that such debate, when undertaken by the Democrats, isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Right now, the Democrats are able to sell this as a fairness/balance issue. Making them actually go through with the messy business of shutting down the Senate to stop nominees that would appear reasonable to most people may well turn that around.

Steven Taylor adds that this would seem to belie the idea that interest groups dominate the agenda and Members ignore the public.

Democrats frequently distort things, to achieve their goals, and as indicated above, the article was written by Alexander Bolton, former assistant to David Corn at The Nation (News and analysis on politics and culture from the left) magazine.