Let’s see, Republicans are attacking the courts and judges, we’re on the verge of full-scale political war in the Senate over judicial nominations, and GOP officials are attending radical right-wing, anti-judiciary conferences at which Republican activists literally embrace a Stalin-like approach to rulings with which they disagree.
And how does Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) hope to ease tensions? By making things worse.
As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as “against people of faith” for blocking President Bush’s nominees.
Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day “Justice Sunday” and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading “the filibuster against people of faith,” it reads: “The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith.”
Organizers say they hope to reach more than a million people by distributing the telecast to churches around the country, over the Internet and over Christian television and radio networks and stations.
Yeah, that ought to help tone down the rhetoric, right? As Josh Marshall put it, “Frist wants to cast this, literally, as a war between the believers and the unbelievers.” Quite right. I have a hunch Senate Dems aren’t going to appreciate this.
We all know Frist wants to run for president, and has decided the best way to do that is to embrace the most dangerous elements in the GOP base. That’s a shame, but that’s his prerogative. Having said that, there comes a point at which Frist’s presidential ambitions literally undermine the integrity of the body he is supposed to lead. Frist has a choice — and he’s not choosing wisely.