How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the "Totally Unacceptable" Nuke Deal

The nuclear compromise played out remarkably quickly after the weekend, and followed basically the lines that I called "totally unacceptable" yesterday: allow the worst judges through, coupled with "extraordinary circumstances" language on future filibusters. Yesterday, I wrote that the problem with that deal was that the worst judge allowed through -- in this case, at least on grounds of ideological extremism, that would be Janice Rogers Brown -- would thus become the definition of less-than-extraordinary circumstances. For Democrats who were party to the agreement to join a filibuster of any nominee, including a Supreme Court nominee, who was any less "unhinged" than Brown (to use National Review's Ramesh Ponnoru's word), would be considered a breach of the deal. (Major Garrett said exactly that on Fox a few minutes after the deal.)

And yet, here we are tonight, and the deal is done. And I'll live with it. First, no one cares whether I think it's "totally unacceptable" or not. (That's apart from the more metaphysical question of who cares what I think about anything.) For that matter, who cares whether Barbara Boxer or even Harry Reid considers it "totally unacceptable"? It's the deal. It's how these 14 Senators have decided to cast their votes, and if the Dems had refused to agree to it, we'd be heading to a vote tomorrow in which Frist would probably win. Second, I think the language in the agreement about how every Senator will follow his or her "own discretion and judgment in determining whether [extraordinary] circumstances exist" in a vague way takes care of my concern. It's boilerplate language, but it makes clear that the judgment about future filibusters is independent of anything in the deal itself. In a way, it reminds me of the language in the Bush v. Gore decision where the Court declared that its use of the equal protection standard applied to this case only one a one-time basis. I see this as an agreement to confirm Brown and Owen one time only, to get this crisis behind us.

Third, I understand that compromise should always leave everyone a little disappointed. Some kind of compromise on this package of judges would have to have been developed even if the Nuclear Option had not been on the table. Some, maybe most, of the judges would go through. So if the deal had been a tiny bit less bad -- for example, if it had included Owen but not Rogers Brown -- I would have been ecstatic. A deal that someone like me would be ecstatic about probably wouldn't attract much Republican support. So this is a relatively small step down from a deal that I would have loved. (Still, it feels like negotiating with blackmailers.)

So, if this all sounds like rationalization because of the pure power-politics implications of a deal, maybe it is. Because those implications are really something. Frist put himself out there with the religious right, made this a matter in which some of them chose to speak in "the prophetic voice," from which no compromise is possible. The mistake Frist made was a small one at the time, and he probably didn't even know he was making it. But by enlisting these outside groups as partners and permanent allies, he cut off his own freedom of maneuver. When he finally realized that a critical mass of his own caucus did not want to blow up the Senate, he was trapped by outside forces. Now he's utterly ruined. John McCain and Lindsay Graham are setting the agenda in the Senate, while to the religious right, Frist is not a martyr to principle, but just an ineffectual leader, a guy who talks big but can't deliver.

(I saw Joe Scarborough on MSNBC -- whose insights into Republican dynamics always seem very solid -- describe Frist as the winner here in the long-run, because McCain will have forfeited the support of the far-right in the 2008 primaries, making it available to Frist. That could be right, but McCain was unlikely to get that support anyway, and there are several 2008 candidates -- Brownback, Santorum, Allen -- who already have a stronger base than Frist with that group and who haven't promised something big that they can't deliver. I think Scarborough's right about McCain, though, and he goes from a candidate the far-right is uncomfortable with to one who will now be "totally unacceptable" to them. It's a mutual destruction pact, and the Republican field for 2008 is now down to the second-tier. Or, in honor of new front-runner George Allen, let's say, second-string.)

If the goal of liberals is to block a truly extremist Supreme Court nominee, block Social Security privatization and more tax cuts, block Bolton, and then begin to shift the debate back to issues of economic security, health care, global leadership, etc., the best possible thing that can happen is for the White House and its agents, such as Frist, to lose their control of all the levers of power in Congress. That's indisputably what this deal does, and for that, I'll learn to love it.