To understand why the Senate fight over judicial nominees went from imminent compromise to inescapable confrontation in less than 12 hours, look no further than James Dobson. Bush doesn’t do nuance, and Dobson doesn’t do compromise.
Worried by reports of a possible compromise, conservative groups that want to eliminate the filibuster in advance of a Supreme Court opening were moving to scuttle any deal.
Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, denounced the notion of a compromise in a radio broadcast over the network, owned by American Family Radio. The network is based in Mississippi, home of Senator Trent Lott, one of those working on a compromise.
“If this is true,” Dr. Dobson said in an interview Tuesday, “it will represent an end run around the majority leader and will quite frankly be seen as a betrayal of the millions of people who put George Bush and the Republicans in office.”
Within a few hours, Lott was telling reporters that his effort to reach a compromise wasn’t sincere and that it was just an attempt to convince moderates who “have to feel assured that every avenue has been explored.” In other words, just a few hours after Dobson calls Lott out, Lott started telling people that his negotiations are just part of the nuclear option game plan so there’s nothing for the far-right to worry about.
In fact, take a look at the item Dobson’s Focus on the Family published yesterday afternoon and consider it in the context of how quickly the Nelson-Lott “compromise” went from likely success to complete failure.
Focus on the Family Action Chairman Dr. James Dobson was incensed that any deal was being brokered which would evade filibuster reform — labeling it “a disaster.”
“For Monopoly players, that is like offering to trade Park Place and Boardwalk for Baltic and Mediterranean,” Dobson said. “If the Republicans consent to this disaster, they’ll not only be abandoning the men and women who put them in office, they’ll be demonstrating that they do not deserve the leadership entrusted to them.
On the substance, Dobson couldn’t be more wrong — Republicans make out like bandits from the deal, getting four right-wing judges on the bench for life in exchange for giving Dems something they already have — but if Dobson says it’s a disaster, the Republican caucus thinks it’s a disaster.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., told CitizenLink he doesn’t like the compromise idea at all.
“I appreciate the effort to try to break through the logjam,” Brownback said, “but it still requires this arbitrary throwing overboard of qualified nominees instead of an up-or-down vote. I just don’t think that’s a constitutional way that the body was meant to operate.”
A spokesman for Sen. Frist said the majority leader would not accept any compromise which did not include restricting the use of filibusters on judicial nominations — and a vote on the constitutional option is still in the offing.
And with that, the Nelson-Lott deal was dead, Frist started getting more specific about bringing up the nuclear option next week, and all doubts about who is calling the shots in the Senate disappeared.