According to a UPI report, Senator Lott is trying to broker a deal where the filibuster of judges ends, but the filibuster rule remains intact. The kicker: the deal includes withdrawing 3 names.
This gives me pause. The thing is that I only care a whit about one of the nominees: Janice Rogers Brown. For all intents and purposes, the others strike me as interchangable social conservatives, which seem to abound in large numbers. Brown, on the other hand, is a small-government, individual rights federalist who deserves to be on the Supreme Court, let alone the DC Circuit.
The libertarian wing of the party hasn't got a heck of a lot out of this administration, despite its blind support last election. We've swallowed all kinds of crap, from steel quotas to anti-gay amendments to runaway spending. So far, Justice Brown is all we have to show.
So, dear Senator Lott, make what deal you can, but if (not to put too fine a point on it) you leave the black woman off the slate, you're going to see a blogstorm that makes the Thurmond affair look like a walk in the park. And Senator Frist can go whistle for our vote when it comes to 2008.
(more at How Appealing)
UPDATE: According to Limbaugh, Brown would indeed be one of the ones to go.
This is essentially the identical deal that we read about in the David Broder piece two Sundays ago that Biden then started talking about on television the same morning, and among those three would be Janice Rogers Brown. She'd be axed on this.Posted by Kevin Murphy at May 9, 2005 02:33 PM | TrackBack
No deal. We're going to establish a precedent that we lose about 1/2 of our disputed nominees?
Posted by: Patterico at May 9, 2005 04:48 PMEvery Republican senator that votes against any of the Presidents nominees, or who votes with the Democrats to stop the neuclear option must understand that they will be opposed for re-election , starting with the primary for the nomination and if that doesn't stop them, in the general election by lots of conservatives and libertarians. Its not a threat, is not even a warning. It is a statement of frustration driven fact
Posted by: Saganashkee at May 9, 2005 08:58 PManti-gay amendments
I prefer to think of them as pro-family amendments. :-)
Posted by: clark smith at May 9, 2005 09:40 PMI'm far more concerned about "civil unions" replacing the institution of marriage than I am about two gays making the same committment my wife and I made.
Ignoring the "yuk" factor, I really don't care one way or the other which 2 people get married. But I do care if the state starts creating marriage-lite laws, which won't just be for gays.
Posted by: Kevin Murphy at May 9, 2005 10:49 PM