Make-or-break weeks for DeLay and Frist

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Losing political compass?
Eighteen months ago, eager to persuade the House to enact a prescription drug benefit as part of Medicare, DeLay leaned hard on GOP members during the roll call vote.

The ethics committee found that DeLay offered to endorse the congressional candidacy of Brad Smith, the son of Rep. Nick Smith, R- Mich., if Smith voted for the prescription drug bill. The panel said it was “improper” for DeLay to have proposed the swap.

By their votes against the bill, 25 GOP members indicated that they thought DeLay had lost not his ethical compass, but his political compass. Back in 1994, he and other conservatives opposed the Clintons' proposal for a government-run health insurance plan, yet by 2003 he was pressuring members to pass a bill that hugely expanded the cost of Medicare and made conservatives sick at heart.

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As DeLay copes with the attacks on him, Frist is struggling to overcome Democratic blockades of Bush judicial nominees.

“We should be given the opportunity to vote, that’s all that we’re asking for,” he said Tuesday.

Frist's admission
Frist made a remarkable admission for a Senate majority leader: in recent weeks, he has allowed the Democrats to get the upper hand in the battle over filibusters.

"We’ve seen over the past three weeks on the other side of the aisle, press conferences, radio addresses, paid advertising on the outside,” Frist told reporters. “I’m not sure exactly how to respond, except that we’re going to be fighting for the principle and we’re going to do it in a way that’s respectful. We need to do a better job… getting information out to all of you (reporters), because as all of you are covering what they (the Democrats) are saying, while I am simply trying to work across the aisle, our voice is being lost.”

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Frist said his restrained rhetoric on the filibuster “has allowed the vacuum to be filled by lot of other voices.” He promised a new effort to persuade the public “over the next several weeks.”

In the long run, the battle over the judiciary will have bigger effect on Americans’ lives than the DeLay ethics battle. Thus, by the first week of May, Frist’s dilemma will likely eclipse DeLay’s.

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