Here we are at another prescribed deadline for Bill Frist's detonation of the “nuclear option” to end judicial filibusters. And here we are, watching that deadline get postponed once more.
Early last week, everyone in the know seemed sure that the majority leader would pull the trigger in the last days before the Senate begins its weeklong recess on April 29. But by yesterday, April 25, Frist aides had put out word that nuclear action would not, in fact, occur this week, so lawmakers can focus their energies on the highway bill and on conference reports for the Iraq War supplemental and the budget.
This cycle of leaked reports touting nuclear action as imminent, followed by inevitable postponement, has recurred a few times during the 109th Congress. (“Senate Republican leaders have decided to begin their use of the ‘nuclear option' … about a month from now,” wrote Bob Novak -- on February 5.) There are three reasons why the showdown keeps receding into the horizon.
First, the political fight doesn't look to be a winner for the GOP. The party's most recent internal polling shows 37 percent supporting the parliamentary move, with 51 percent opposed. (The latest Washington Post/CNN poll puts approval at 26 percent.) Hopes that the Democrats might hurt themselves in the polls by waging unpopular retaliatory actions seem like wishful thinking, particularly considering what looks to be the minority's actual planned response -- nothing like an immediate, total shutdown of the Senate but, rather, a gradually escalating series of parliamentary tactics meant to impede Republicans' legislative momentum over a course of months, combined with an effort to force votes on the Democrats' top agenda items.
Second, most elements of the Republican coalition, besides the religious right, are very wary of picking this fight. The National Right to Work Committee and the National Rifle Association came out early against the nuclear option, while industry outfits like the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers made it clear last week that they're more interested in seeing the Senate continue to help pass business-friendly legislation (energy and asbestos bills are up next) than watching the gears slowly grind to a halt due to a dispute over a handful of judges.
Third, and most crucially, the bulk of Senate Republicans feel the same way -- which is to say that, contrary to Mitch McConnell's recent assurances, the leadership at this point still has probably not locked down the 50 votes necessary for the gambit to succeed. John Warner of Virginia may be a bellwether of Republican sentiment in this regard. Long wary of supporting the measure, the institutional traditionalist began publicly warming to the idea in early spring, only to have the Terri Schiavo circus reignite his opposition to the party's dalliance with boundary-smashing religious extremism. At this point, according to an official at one of the leading anti-nuclear-option advocacy groups, “Most people believe that Warner is going to be with us.”
So this is a battle that many Republicans would rather not fight, one promising few prospects for political gain and even the chance of outright substantive defeat. How in the world did Senate Republicans reach this point, you wonder? Ask the good doctor leading the charge.
Fresh off a triumphant tour of duty as National Republican Senatorial Campaign chair, Bill Frist stepped in as the White House-anointed replacement for disgraced Majority Leader Trent Lott in December 2002. The earnest physician boasted a biography and persona that seemed like political gold at the time. “He's our messiah,” a Republican aide proclaimed to New York Times Magazine writer David Gran after Frist's ascension. But in short order, and consistently over the next two years, Frist proved to be an inept politician and a remarkably wobbly, ineffective leader -- a weak link in the chain of unified Republican control over the federal government.
Republicans should have seen it coming, given how unprecedented it was for a White House team to handpick the Senate majority leader in the first place. The difficulty inherent in managing the “greatest deliberative body” is notorious; the majority leader has traditionally been a member who has risen through the ranks and proven to be skilled at legislative brokerage and parliamentary tactics. Frist had done no such thing, and soon enough proved to have no such skills.
Time and again during the 108th Congress and into the 109th, Frist has found himself outmatched by minority tactics and stymied in his ability to generate momentum for the Republicans' agenda. The more strategic miscalculations and idle threats have piled up, the more Frist's authority has dwindled in the eyes of Senate players. As one veteran lobbyist told Congressional Quarterly in a critical assessment of the doctor's first two years as leader, “Frist draws a line in the sand, but unfortunately, it's sand. It's not granite, so it keeps changing.”
Compounding his tactical bumbling are his personal political ambitions, which deeply compromise his ability to manage the Senate effectively. Clearly viewing the evangelical base as a required ally for his planned 2008 presidential bid, Frist has lurched clumsily -- and transparently -- to appeal to it, and his conference has suffered for the efforts. The ill-timed vote he forced on the federal marriage amendment in the summer of 2004 failed to elicit even majority support while stymieing progress on a class-action reform bill then close to passage. Meanwhile, his strategy regarding the Democrats' judicial filibusters managed from the beginning to combine unyielding confrontation, which only inflamed Democratic opposition, with obvious futility, which only convinced base activists that he wasn't fighting the minority hard or effectively enough.
Indeed, probably the most damaging result of Frist's strategic clumsiness and political pandering is that he has so often managed to bring out into the open the degree to which Republicans do not (and cannot) actually deliver for their religious-right base. A skilled Republican leader -- think of the president -- obscures the fact that GOP political success depends on never achieving anything for the constituency that provides the party its electoral muscle. Frist telegraphs it.
That's in part why the religious base he courts so assiduously still mistrusts him. Anti-Frist grumbling permeated the now-infamous judge-bashing conference put on several weeks ago by the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration (JCCCR). Hardly a panel discussion was held during which an audience member did not ask about Frist's backpedaling in the wake of the Schiavo overreach, or about his failure thus far to pull the nuclear trigger. “I do think there was disappointment expressed -- and I shared it -- with the position that he took on Terri Schiavo,” says JCCCR Chairman Rick Scarborough. “I think that after some initial bold statements, he failed to carry through.” Christian conservative activists know that the Harvard-trained physician isn't one of them. If he wants to avoid their wrath, he needs to deliver some goods.
Thus, the current morass into which Frist has plunged the Senate. The headaches Republicans feel over this showdown mark the wages of their leader's incompetence. Compromise proposals on the judicial question are beginning to pop up on both sides of the aisle, but from Frist's perspective, anything short of pulling the nuclear trigger would surely jeopardize his presidential prospects. “He built a trap for himself,” says the advocacy-group official tracking the fight in the Senate. “He's succeeded in making this a huge issue for the base without necessarily being able to deliver.”
Scarborough says that he and his allies expect Frist to pull the trigger very, very soon. He leaves the consequences of failure implicit, but clear. “I think we can count on him to carry through,” Scarborough says. “We'll be thoroughly disappointed if he does not.”
Sam Rosenfeld is a Prospect Web writer.
