The Coming Nuclear Winter

Interesting "inside baseball" article in this a.m.'s WashPost on how exactly the Senate Republicans intend to achieve their "nuclear option" of changing Senate rules in respect to filibusters.

Here's how they'll do it: Debate actually started this morning at 9:30 a.m. over one of El Presidente's judicial nominees, Priscilla Owen. Either tomorrow or Friday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and other Republican senators are likely to file a motion seeking cloture, or an end to debate. One session day must pass before a vote to end debate, once a cloture motion has been filed. Presumably the vote to end debate would fail, falling short of the necessary 60 votes. At that point, with Vice President Dick Cheney presiding (as is his right), Senator Frist will rise to object that Democratic filibustering of judicial nominees is out of order. Cheney (surprise!) would rule that Frist is absolutely, purely, unconditionally correct, even super-Christlike. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) would then object and ask that the ruling of the chair be tabled. Most Republicans would then vote against the Democratic motion, upholding the ruling. Then the Senate would move to a vote on Owen, and a precedent will have been set that it takes 51 votes, not 60, to cut off debate on a judicial nomination. That's the "likely scenario," as ferreted out by ace reporter Mike Allen.

(Turns out it didn't take all that much ferreting, since this scenario was included in an article published last fall in the "Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy" by Martin B. Gold, a partner at Covington & Burling, who is also a former floor adviser to Frist, and Dimple Gupta, a former Justice Department lawyer who was hired in March by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter. Someone named "Dimple" is plotting Republican legal strategy!)

Part of Allen's article also turns up the interesting sidebar that the Republican-appointed Senate parliamentarian, Alan S. Frumin, is dead-set against this "nuclear option" and has told Sen. Reid that he would rule against it ... if asked. "But a senior Republican Senate aide confirmed that Frist does not plan to consult Frumin at the time the nuclear option is deployed. 'He has nothing to do with this,' the aide said. 'He's a staffer, and we don't have to ask his opinion.' "

Personally, we're weary of the Democrats' tendency to cave. This morning on C-SPAN, Democratic callers were beginning to say "maybe these judges won't be as bad as we think." "Maybe Godzilla will become vegetarian." Yeah. We can always pray.

If I were a Republican Senator (one can fantasize, given enough gin), I might be thinking of setting a new precedent for confirming judicial nominees in light of the future, balefully starring them in their collective face ... PRESIDENT HILLARY CLINTON. We know they're going to be delighted that they mucked around with the rules when the second President Clinton begins sending up her judicial nominees. But these guys -- especially Frist -- don't think 30 minutes past their need to placate the Religious Right.