Bill Frist hasn’t had a good year, but he continues to maintain the façade that he’s in control, finding success, and well positioned for a presidential campaign in 2008. One of the Senate Majority Leader’s more amusing arguments came over the weekend, when he tried to take credit for the Gang of 14’s compromise over judicial nominees.
The majority leader said the judicial impasse would have never been broken had he not forced the issue by threatening to prohibit filibusters and engaged in an extended buildup to the vote, creating pressure for a compromise.
“Without that sort of leadership, there is no deal to be cut, there are no brokers to deal, there is no deal to be brokered,” he said.
Or put another way: Without Frist’s recklessness and obstinacy, unwillingness to listen to reason, and intransigence in the face of reasonable compromise offers, centrists wouldn’t have felt the need to go around him and cut Frist’s radical proposal off at the knees. The Gang of 14 couldn’t have become media darlings if his irresponsible lunacy hadn’t brought them to the negotiating table in the first place. So, to honor the nuclear-option compromise is really to honor Frist — since he made it happen.
Please. There’s spin and then there’s desperation. Frist claiming his “leadership” led to a deal is just silly.