Hurricanes turn Capitol's politics topsy-turvy

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'Suicidal' move by Feingold?
“But today, Feingold threw it all away,” said Democrats.com in a statement. “Senator Feingold, you are worse than naive — you are a suicidal idiot.”

Neither party is speaking with a unified message right now. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid opposed Roberts while Leahy, Feingold, and probably a dozen other Democrats will support him when the full Senate votes Thursday.

But at the same time there is uneasiness in conservative GOP ranks that Bush’s next Supreme Court nominee won’t be conservative enough and that Bush will allow Democrats to delay the confirmation until next year.

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One top Senate Republican staff member, speaking on condition of anonymity, said if Bush didn’t announce his nominee to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor by Monday or Tuesday, it was likely the Democrats could prevent a pre-Thanksgiving vote and then stall until 2006.

“If the Democrats want to stop us, they can stop us,” the staffer said.

Conservative fear of next nominee
Bush was also getting discreet pressure on his next nominee from the Right. “My fear is that we would get somebody that is very malleable, in order to get through the (confirmation) process easily,” said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. before casting his vote for Roberts in the Judiciary Committee.

Brownback said the Democrats will seek to filibuster the next nomination in any event. “You could nominate John Roberts’s absolute twin and he would be filibustered,” he predicted.

Brownback, who is said to have presidential ambitions in 2008, has urged Bush’s aides to not be swayed by Democrats’ filibuster threats.

“I told them this is what the whole 2004 election was about,” the Kansan said. “As one of them noted to me, for the president to nominate somebody who would be a legislator instead of a judge would be the equivalent of what his dad did in breaking his ‘no new taxes’ promise in 1991. That is how central this issue was in the last election…. People know who went door-to-door in Ohio for the president and who won Iowa for the first time in 20 years. It was predominantly social conservatives and people who are deeply concerned about the direction the Supreme Court is taking the country.”

Despite the storms turning much of the Capitol’s politics topsy-turvy, Brownback was advising Bush to heed one of the fixed rules of politics: don’t forget those whom you owe.

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