More on Frist

Just when you thought the whining by Senate Republicans about the handful of Bush's ultra-fringe judicial nominees that the Democrats can't bring themselves in good conscience to support couldn't get any more ludicrous, it just did. According to Senator Frist, the debate over debating rules in the Senate isn't just about the Constitutional meaning of "advise and consent", it's really about how much the Democrats hate Jesus.

As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.

Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

Now really, this is as outrageous as it is pathetic. Senator Reid and the ADL get the response absolutely right. Much has already been said about the right's new war against the core principles of American democracy, and I don't have much to add. And while I really don't expect the Republican establishment to condemn Frist's atroicious behavior, they should, and so should everyone else.

Finally Pulling the Trigger

First and his political allies couldn't have been too happy with this story in the Washington Post this morning. Claiming that Sen. Frist "all but certain to press for a rule change that would ban filibusters of judicial nominations in the next few weeks," the article makes it clear that Frist, despite his protestations, is motivated by something less than a principled defense of the Constitution:

Conservative activists are giving Frist little wiggle room. "If Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist hopes to capture the Republican nomination for president in 2008, then he has to see to it that the Bush judicial nominees are confirmed," Richard Lessner, executive director of the American Conservative Union, wrote in a recent article. "If he fails, then he is dead as a presidential wannabe."

Lessner is not somebody to be taken likely in conservative Republican circles, and he has the attention of a couple of other Senators considering a 2008 run:

At least two GOP colleagues who are pressing [Frist] to seek the rule change — George Allen (Va.) and Rick Santorum (Pa.) — also are weighing presidential bids. Both of them are wooing key conservatives clamoring for the filibuster ban.

But the political risks of banning the filibuster are high, too. No wonder, then, that Frist, who has been talking about "going nuclear" for months, seems to have hesitated for as long as he could before finally agreeing to pull the trigger. And, I think, he waited just a little too long.

A few weeks back, the Schiavo case clearly demonstrated that when the Republicans talk about "principle", they're really talking about power politics. Frist's grandstanding during that bit of unpleasantness also demonstrated that many voters are increasingly willing to call bullshit on the GOP when it engages in that kind of crass and transparent gamesmanship. As Frist gets ready to go all high and mightly in the service of the GOP majority and his own personal political future, I can only say, "bring it on". The Republicans who think that it will be the Democrats who will pay the price for Frist's power play will soon be proven to have been just as wrong as the Senate staffer who said that Terri Schiavo represented a "great political opportunity" for the GOP.