The parties line up their artillery as the Senate draws closer to the nuclear option. The president has renominated several candidates for judgeships who were filibustered in his first term and Senate Democrats say they will filibuster them again.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, (R-Tennessee) won’t back down in this fight to get rid of the age-old judicial nominee filibuster. Many political experts see Frist’s grandstanding as a ploy to position himself as a front-runner for party support in the 2008 presidential election. The problem he runs into is that some moderate Senate Republicans would prefer to avoid this conflict.
Senator Chuck Hagel (R – Nebraska) told ABC’s This Week, “My goodness, you’ve got 100 United States senators. Some of us might be moderately intelligent enough to figure this out. We need to work through this.”
Hagel was critical of party leaders inability to work this out although he did say that Frist and Senate Minortiy Leader Harry Reid (D – Nevada) continue to negotiate on this topic. But as a moderate, Hagel continues to express a troubled opinion on ditching the judicial filibuster as an important tool to preserve minority rights in the Senates. There’s also speculation Hagel is interested in the nod for the presidency on ’08.
Democrats are working hard on strengthening their ties to moderate Republicans with regard to this issue and remains to be seen how the moderate Republicans will vote. This political fight continues the disjointed polarity that has been prevalent in the U.S. political arena for several years now and shows no signs of slowing down. One can only hope that the moderates in both parties can bring a bit of sanity into the process.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
