Merry Christmas, Senate Democrats

Bush sure gave the Senate Democrats a big steaming pile of holiday cheer yesterday:

President Bush announced yesterday his intention to renominate 20 people previously blocked by Senate Democrats for federal court seats, setting the stage for a renewal of the bitter partisan battles over the makeup of the federal judiciary.

The president's list includes seven appeals court candidates whose nominations were stalled on the Senate floor by Democrats, who said the nominees' conservative views were out of the mainstream. The other nominations never made it to the full Senate. Buoyed by his reelection and a four-seat Republican gain in the Senate, Bush said he will submit the nominees' names when the Senate returns to work next month.

I hope this announcement ends any lingering feeling on the part of Senate Democrats that Bush is willing to pursue anything but a scorched-earth agenda. Red-state Democrats with elections in 2006 should pay particular attention to recent history: if you fight Bush, he will attack you, but if you try to work constructively with Bush, he will attack you, too. Bush chose Christmas to declare war on the Democratic Party in the new year, and it would be a mistake to believe that any appeasement is possible.

On the other hand, these do-over nominations do give Democrats an opportunity to define the field of combat for the next two years. Frist has made it clear that he will move to declare filibusters of judicial nominees unconstitutional, so let's make him do it sooner rather than later. Delaying the inevitable helps Democrats not at all, so it's best if we get this process piece out of the way.