A Center Forms to Outflank Left, Right
WASHINGTON — Monday's last-ditch compromise on confirming federal judges was a striking reassertion of the power of the political center in a bitterly polarized environment, pulling the Senate back from the brink of a crisis that threatened to paralyze the institution and dramatically change its character.
The sternest test of the fragile accord will come when the Senate takes up the next nomination to the Supreme Court, possibly as early as this summer, and partisan pressures intensify.
Still, the agreement -- in which seven moderate Republicans broke ranks from their party and joined seven moderate Democrats -- is an unusual challenge to Bush and GOP leaders who until now have commanded remarkable party discipline on a wide range of issues. It throws a rare obstacle in the Republicans' steady march toward the overarching goal of the Bush presidency: to parlay the party's slim majority in the country into major changes in policy and in government institutions for years to come.
"In a Senate that is increasingly polarized, the bipartisan center held," said Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.).
The compromise apparently will prevent Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) from implementing a ban on judicial filibusters -- a Senate rules change known as the "nuclear option" for its potentially explosive political impact. The ban was expected to make it easier for Bush to put more conservative judges on the bench for lifetime appointments.
But the compromise -- a middle ground between Republicans who want to ban judicial filibusters and Democrats who want to retain them -- includes two big loopholes that could come back to haunt the Senate: Democrats reserved the right to filibuster future judicial nominations in "extraordinary circumstances." Republicans kept the power to revisit the nuclear option if they believe Democrats are filibustering in circumstances that do not reach that standard.
If Bush chooses a very conservative nominee to fill the next Supreme Court vacancy -- as is expected this summer, with the likely retirement of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist -- Democrats will come under renewed pressure to reassert their filibuster right.
And if that happens, Republicans say, they may resurrect the effort to ban that right.
Frist, who was under heavy pressure from conservative and evangelical groups to brook no compromise, said he was disappointed that the agreement still "fell short" of the principal demand that no nominee should be filibustered.
