Senate Makes a Lousy Deal

This is the end of too much!

The Senate moderates have made a deal over judicial nominations, and it is fit for words I do not use. Hugh Hewitt has the essential text (here). A pdf, with signatures, of the full text is here.

The signatories, as well as I can tell (some are illegible) are: Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mike DeWine (R-OH), J [illegible], Susan Collins (R-ME), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Lindsay Graham ? (R-SC), Lincoln Chaffee (R-RI), John McCain (R-AZ), John Warner (R-VA), Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Olympia Snowe ? (R-ME), Ken Salazar (D-CO), completely illegible.

Here's what the Republicans (and the President and his judicial nominees) get: "Votes for certain nominees." Three of them. Janice Rogers Brown, Pricilla Owen, William Pryor.

Here's what the Democrats get:

(1) Henry Saad and William Myers get thrown over a cliff--make that, they get left hanging with no guarantee of ever getting an up-or-down vote.

(2) Future nominees will be subject to filibuster, if the Democrats consider that there are "extraordinary circumstances," with each Senator using his or her discretion to decide when things are extraordinary.

(3) "[W]e commit to oppose the rules changes in the 109th Congress, which we understand to be any amendment to or interpretation of the Rules of the Senate that would force a vote on a judicial nomination by means other than unanimous consent or Rule XXII." The "we" at the beginning of this point are the signatories, above. In other words, for the entirety of 2005 and 2006, none of these Senators who signed this deal will vote to prevent the minority party from holding judicial nominees' up-or-down votes hostage.

Let's see how this balances out: The Republicans, whom the majority of American voters put into power so the President's policies and judicial nominations can get acted on, get three judicial nominees voted on. The Democrats, whose obstructionist tactics were soundly defeated at the polls this past November, get darn near everything they want, including the right to filibuster whomever they want to, and the Republicans agree to roll over and play dead.

The Republicans who signed this "deal" have, in so doing, signed their own political doom. I know I'm not alone in determining to oppose all of these Republicans in their next bid for re-election. They have screwed over the people who elected them for the last time.

Update: The corrected list of signatories to The Deal includes Joe Lieberman (D-CT) as "J (illegible) and Daniel Inouye (D-HI) as "completely illegible." (HT: Andrew at ConfirmThem)