{"id":4275,"date":"2005-05-24T08:57:02","date_gmt":"2005-05-24T12:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4275.html"},"modified":"2005-05-24T08:57:02","modified_gmt":"2005-05-24T12:57:02","slug":"whats-the-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/whats-the-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s the deal?"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK, so is the “Group of 14” deal that thwarted the nuclear option a good one or not? Who wins? Who loses? Blogging doesn’t lend itself well to subtleties and unforeseen variables, but I think it’s fair to call this arrangement<\/a> a “mixed bag.”<\/p>\n

On the surface, Dems didn’t gain very much at all. They “won” something they already had: the ability to filibuster unqualified judicial nominees. In turn, Dems were forced to make a dramatic concession: three awful nominees — Janice Rogers Brown<\/a>, Priscilla Owen<\/a>, and Bill Pryor<\/a>, none of whom should have been nominated in the first place — have been cleared for confirmation votes. They’ll soon take their lifetime positions on the federal appeals bench, which is a genuine travesty. <\/p>\n

Making matters worse, Dems have pledged to use filibusters in the future only in “extraordinary circumstances.” The phrase not only is maddeningly ambiguous, it undercuts the (accurate) Dem position — we’ve already<\/i> limited filibusters to “extraordinary circumstances.”<\/p>\n

And yet, here we are the morning after. The Dems are smiling, Bill Frist is dejected, and the right is apoplectic<\/a>. This isn’t a “doth protest too much” situation; conservatives are filled with genuine rage because they’re convinced that they’ve suffered a horrible defeat and betrayal. Who’s right?<\/p>\n

Nearly all of this comes down to a simple question: who would have won the nuclear option floor vote. If you believe Dems would have won and maintained the pre-yesterday status quo, the deal is a disaster — three dreadful nominees that would have been blocked are moving forward, so the deal represents a real setback. If you believe Frist would have won today, the deal for Dems is a dramatic success story — instead of being left with nothing but frustration, Henry Saad<\/a> and William Myers<\/a> are out, and the ability to filibuster future nominees, including Supreme Court nominees, is still on the table.<\/p>\n

So, who would have won the floor vote today? No one’s sure, but The Hill reported<\/a> this morning that Arlen Specter communicated to GOP leaders that he was prepared to support<\/em> the nuclear option. Without Specter’s vote, Dems would have found it almost impossible to get the six Republican defections needed to defeat the effort.<\/p>\n

Given this, yesterday’s deal could have been a whole lot worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, so is the “Group of 14” deal that thwarted the nuclear option a good one or not? Who wins? Who loses? Blogging doesn’t lend itself well to subtleties and unforeseen variables, but I think it’s fair to call this arrangement a “mixed bag.” On the surface, Dems didn’t gain very much at all. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}