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Frist is taking the Senate down a path he will regret

By MARIANNE MEANS
April 22, 2005, 8:49PM

For Republican senators, the looming vote orchestrated by Majority Leader Bill Frist to end the minority's traditional right to filibuster objectionable judicial nominees is not just about partisan fury.

Nor, certainly, is it about an imagined Democratic attack on "people of faith," a misleadingly pious phrase used by Republicans to mean Christian conservatives.

This is an argument about judicial enforcement of secular law. It has nothing to do with where anybody goes to church. Democrats filibustered 10 recycled Bush nominees because of their extreme right-wing legal views, not their Bible-reading habits. The rule of law is the issue here, not the role of religion.

But what this really comes down to is the length of political memory. A handful of GOP lawmakers have the good sense and courage to express opposition or serious reservations about the radical strategy to deny the minority their best political weapon.

They are veterans who remember when their party was in the minority, and found the filibuster very useful. Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole wryly observed, "The Senate is not always going to be Republican. Think down the road."

Republicans should recall — and repent — their 1947 enthusiasm over changing the Constitution to limit a president to two terms, a move born of their frustration over Franklin Roosevelt's four terms. The political result? Two beloved GOP presidents were subsequently barred from a third term, although they both seemed likely to be re-elected — Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.

Frist is apparently still not certain whether he can hold enough of his 55-vote majority to win what everyone calls "the nuclear option." He needs 50 votes for the parliamentary shift.

Senate Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, a tougher political critter than his predecessor Tom Daschle, has warned that he will use every known procedural tactic to bring Senate business to a halt if the filibuster is zapped.

At least seven Senate Republicans remain publicly undecided on Frist's move, expressing grave doubts about the consequences. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., takes the long view and thinks it is a bad idea.

"Some day there will be a liberal Democrat president and a liberal Democrat Congress," he says. "Do we want a bunch of liberal judges approved ... with 51 votes?" Yet he is also hedging a bit, reluctant to defy the GOP leadership too far.

The frenzy over judge-bashing escalated recently with the congressional debacle over Terri Schiavo; the Republican drive to intervene in the case backfired badly and conservatives are eager to lash out at someone. Democrats as usual are the handiest target.

It is all a prelude to the coming battle over the next Supreme Court nominee, which both sides see as crucial to the direction of American society. And it is entangled in GOP presidential politics.

Frist and McCain are potential candidates, as is Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who is still noncommittal on the nuclear option because, he says, "it is a dangerous approach. It's an irresponsible approach."

The judicial firestorm could also end the president's crusade to partially privatize Social Security, which is opposed by virtually all Democrats and not going down well with the public.

In South Carolina on Monday — a certifiable Bush state — the president was greeted with hostile warnings that his plan was a tough sell. If the Senate is gridlocked, Social Security won't even come up.

Yet Frist is plunging ahead, despite the risk of failure. His presidential ambitions are steering his political course away from the center into the arms of the party's dominant right wing.

But he has made his second colossal blunder — following his phony long-distance medical examination of poor Terri Schiavo — by pursing the filibuster issue with such nonjudicial fervor. He has aligned himself with prominent, socially conservative religious leaders, promising to appear on a telecast this Sunday that seeks to frame the judicial issue as a matter of religious bias. The program is called Justice Sunday: Stop the filibuster against people of faith.

Embracing this demagoguery is an astonishing miscalculation for a Senate leader, and he was promptly criticized by Democrats who were outraged at being labeled "faithless." Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called the event "deeply un-American." It was too much even for Frist's predecessor, Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who noted that Democrats had not necessarily filibustered the targeted nominees because of their religion.

"People of faith were abused, but they weren't abused perhaps because of their faith," Lott said.

Frist is taking the Senate down an explosive path. Only a last-minute compromise, in which the Democrats vote for some of the nominees and the president withdraws others, could prevent the Senate from dissolving. And dumping the president's agenda into the shredder. Where, actually, it belongs.

Means is a Washington, D.C.-based columnist for the Hearst Newspapers.

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http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3148804