Vote on Alito Delayed

WaPo reported The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee reached an agreement yesterday evening to wait until next Tuesday to vote on the nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court.... In the end, Specter and Frist essentially acknowledged the prerogative Democrats have under Senate rules to postpone any committee decision for one week. GOP leaders grumbled that Democrats had reneged on an earlier agreement about when the Alito vote would take place -- an agreement that Democrats denied ever existed.

The Democrats are so evil they will not keep any agreement. The Republicans need to understand that if they are going to make a deal where one side agrees to do something, in return for the other side doing something else, they need to see the Democrats keep their side of the deal first.

Betsy blogged No surprise here. The Democrats reneged on their deal for scheduling a vote on Alito this week. They probably won't gain anything by this one week delay unless some controversial decision comes down from the Court in the week of delay where O'Connor was the swing vote and if Alito would have voted differently. The delay is most likely a sop to the interest groups who are so upset that the Democrats somehow didn't do more to stop Alito. They are trying to deny Bush much of a victory lap to celebrate Alito's confirmation before the State of the Union.... Boy, who cares if the confirmation takes place one week or three days before the State of the Union? For that short term advantage, it was apparently worthwhile to go back on their deal.

The lesson here is not to make deals where the GOP gives up something in advance in anticpation of Democrats fulfilling their part of the deal later. How many times will the Dems have to pull the football away before the GOP understands this.

Sister Toldjah blogged

Yesterday, Mr. Leahy was not claiming that anything extraordinary had come up. The only explanation he has offered is that Democrats didn’t want to cut short their Martin Luther King Day holiday.

Yeah, like Senator Hillary “Plantation” Clinton.