Olive Branch

WaPo reported Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid on Monday offered the Democrats' support for one of President Bush's judicial nominees, former Senate lawyer Thomas Griffith, as a goodwill gesture in the confrontation over banning judicial filibusters.

"Let's take a step away from the precipice," Reid said. "Let's try cooperation, rather than confrontation, which seems to be the hallmark of what we've been doing here lately." Griffith replaced a third, Hispanic lawyer Miguel Estrada, who withdrew his nomination for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia after Democrats filibustered his nomination for two years. Griffith was the Senate's general counsel during President Clinton's impeachment and became Brigham Young University's general counsel in 2003.

Democrats are hoping Reid's offer will help convince a number of undecided Republicans that they can be reasonable and that the GOP should not support Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's call to ban judicial filibusters. "We know the difference between opposing nominees and blocking nominees. We will oppose bad nominees, but we will only block unacceptable nominees," Reid said.

Red @ScaredMonkeys blogged All we seem to hear about is how Republican will be made to pay by pushing the issue of the “nuclear option”. That’s rather interesting because I happen to feel the Democrats are more worse off over the fact that Senator Reid can’t act like a leader of a party and make such comments like “I think this guy is a loser“, when referring to the President. Also, if Reid is coming from such a position of strength why does he continually want to make a deal? Hardly seems like the thing one would do when one has the upper hand.

K. J. Lopez blogged The Dems don't have the votes for a Griffith filbuster--that's why Reid's being so giving.

Reid's last offer was to let two of the 10 go through. Now it is just 1. He really is confused when it comes to negotiation.