Opinions and comments on the senate compromise deal....

[whistle]

....and whether or not Senator Bill Frist's leadership as majority leader of the senate be damaged. How does Harry Reid stand now as minority leader?

I say, Frist has hit a wall as an extreme an unbending majority leader that will hurt his power base with the voters. Reid has elevated his position as a strong minority leader, who is able to work out reasonable compromises.


Here is the headline article from the New York Times today:

<snip>
May 24, 2005
Bipartisan Agreement in Senate Averts a Showdown on Judges
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, May 23 - A bipartisan group of 14 senators struck a last-second agreement on Monday that defused - at least for now - a potentially explosive parliamentary showdown over eliminating Senate filibusters against judicial nominees.

Under a compromise reached by an assortment of moderates, mavericks and senior statesmen just as the Senate was headed into a climactic overnight debate on the filibuster, three previously blocked appeals court nominees - Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryor and Priscilla R. Owen - will get floor votes. No commitment was made on the fate of two others, William Myers and Henry Saad.

In addition, the seven Democrats in the deal vowed that they would filibuster future judicial nominees only under "extraordinary" circumstances. Their Republican counterparts promised to support no changes in Senate rules that would alter the filibuster rule, effectively denying the votes it would take to enact such a rules change.

Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was a chief architect of the deal, said the negotiators had been motivated by a mutual desire to prevent lasting damage to the Senate from a rules change. Mr. McCain said the pact was hammered out in the "finest traditions of the Senate."

"We have kept the Republic," said Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, who had fought the rules change as an abuse of Senate traditions. And Senator Joseph I. Lieberman declared, "In a Senate that's become increasingly partisan and polarized, the bipartisan center held."

<more>
<link> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/24/politics/24judges.html?th&emc=th

[CWebster]

1. His compromise

negates every argument and moral and ethical stand he stood on the Senate floor and made for the past week.

He laid down and died and he knows it.

[sam sarrha]

2. Reid has given a voice to the moderate RepugNuts.. now they have an

acceptable position to vote from.. and many of them are feeling like maybe they dont want to work for Darth Vader anymore..an equal opportunity meat grinder.. Perhaps they want to distance themselves from reasons and Cause for the war in light of the Downing Street Memo.. maybe not going away

[chelsea0011]

3. Compromise? Doesn't that mean both sides benefit? Sounds to me

like the Dems lost all around.