Republican Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee shakes hands with Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada last night after some of their lieutenants patched together a compromise for the Parties to return to regular business in the US Senate…and wait to fight another day.
Gun-shy Senators from the Republican and Democratic Parties (14 of them led, instructively, by real war hero Sen. John McCain of Arizona) brokered a “cease-fire” that rescued the US Capitol from the precipice of a MAD (mutual assured destruction) round of partisan politics at the eleventh hour last night.
In a compromise that will likely anger extremists in both Parties (and rightly so), they negotiated an arrangement that will allow some of President Bush’s judicial nominees to be confirmed, arbitrarily sacrifice a couple and preserve the integrity of Senate rules…at least until Bush makes the imminent announcement of his nominee for the US Supreme Court.
Of course, as is so often the case in politics, there’s much less to this compromise than advertized. After all, Republican Senators who did not sign the armistice insist that it does not affect their determination to take the Senate right back to MAD politics to ensure the right of every single judicial nominee to have her nomination voted on in the US Senate – without exception.
Therefore, brokering this arrangement was rather like getting the country all worked-up for a showdown at high-noon and then, at 11:59, saying “sorry folks, but we’ve decided to postpone this fight until midnight”….
Click here for details on the political skirmishes that led to this aborted showdown and here for the story on how cooler heads prevailed…for now.
News and Politics
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