Centrists compromise, averting filibuster faceoff

White House upbeat
The White House said the agreement was a positive development.

“Many of these nominees have waited for quite some time to have an up-or-down vote and now they are going to get one. That’s progress,” presidential press secretary Scott McClellan said. “We will continue working to push for up or down votes for all the nominees.”

The deal was sealed around the table in Sen. John McCain’s office, across the street from the Capitol where senators had expected an all-night session of speech-making, prelude to Tuesday’s anticipated showdown.

Nominally, the issue at hand was Bush’s selection of Owen, a member of the Texas Supreme Court, to a seat on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

Rehnquist’s uncanny timing
In fact, as the rhetoric suggested, the stakes were far broader, with Republicans maneuvering to strip Democrats of their right to filibuster and thus block current and future nominees to the appeals courts and Supreme Court.

There currently is no vacancy on the high court, although one or more is widely expected in Bush’s term. Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s coincidental presence in the Capitol during the day was a reminder of that. At age 80 and battling thyroid cancer, he entered the building in a wheelchair on his way to a doctor's office.

Under a complicated situation in effect on the Senate floor, an agreement among six senators of each party was sufficient to avert the showdown. Six Democrats agreeing not to filibuster assured judicial nominees of a yes-or-no vote. Six Republicans signing the accord meant Frist and other GOP leaders would not have the votes to strip Democrats of their ability to filibuster.

The agreement came as Frist and Reid, D-Nev., steered the Senate toward a showdown on Bush’s nominees and historic filibuster rules, under which a minority can prevent action unless the majority gains 60 votes.

For decades, Senate rules have permitted opponents to block votes on judicial nominees by mounting a filibuster, a parliamentary device that can be stopped only by a 60-vote majority.

But Republicans, frustrated by Democratic filibusters that thwarted 10 of Bush’s first-term appeals court nominees and prepared to block seven of them again, threatened to supersede that rule by simple majority vote.

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