Countdown to "Armageddon"

Here is the one tidbit you need to know to understand everything else to come in this post:

Democrats said they were a couple of votes short in this struggle [over the confirmation filibuster] that could shift the balance of power between Congress and the White House.

Shift it back into balance, that is. That sure explains why Dirty Harry almost sounded like he was sobbing on the Senate floor today:

"'I'm confident and hopeful that there will be six Republican senators who will be profiles in courage," said Reid of Nevada in a Senate speech. "I believe there must be at least six out there.'"

Generally speaking, the words "confident" and "hopeful" really don't go together because if you have one, you don't need the other.

"Wing and a prayer" might be more appropriate, actually, under the circumstances (via NRO's Bench Memos):

Mr. Reid has proposed compromises that would trade acceptance of some judges for withdrawal of others but leave intact the minority's right to stop Supreme Court nominees and others. But aides said Friday that Dr. Frist was insisting only on allowing the Senate to hold a vote on each nominee, which leaves open at least the remote possibility that the two sides could avert the showdown if Democrats agreed to allow votes for all the judges and at least a handful of Republicans in turn indicated that they would help Democrats vote down a few of them. [my emphasis]

Sure - if Republicans wanted to end up down 55-45 after the 2006 midterms. This is what you get from people who are crazy, but not as crazy as the Sorosians and moveon.orgers and Moore-ons who are puppeteering them. Their idea of a "compromise" is like a rapist offering to not violate his victim himself in exchange for the victim violating herself with a floor lamp. This is the sort of thing that the acryonym "WTF?!?" was made for.

Somebody needs to remind Senator Reid that fantasy football leagues resume in the fall.

And then there's the latest installment of "Sondergeld echo syndrome."

Two days ago I blogged the following:

Once again, a minority legislative faction is attempting to emasculate the constitutional authority of the Executive. And while the nation isn't in the same overtly prostrated condition, the potential damage is even greater for the trends in that direction being the less obvious. For it isn't just the Executive that minority Democrats are trying to squash, but all three: the Legislative by preventing the Senate from exercising its advise and consent function, and the Judiciary by functionally depopulating it via attrition in order to ensure that a like-minded minority controls it as well, and thus to maintain de facto left-wing rule over the country in defiance of the wishes of the people as expressed at the ballot box.

Today, Bradford Berenson wrote this:

The stakes are far greater than the fates of individual nominees, although that is important. The stakes are really about the institutional balance of power — or the constitutional separation of powers, if you prefer — between the Congress and the president. If internal Senate rules can be used to prevent majoritarian advice and consent on judicial nominations, the president's clearly delineated power to make selections for the federal courts can effectively be stripped from him.

In addition to the hypotheticals posed by Andy in his article, what would prevent the Senate from deciding that a supermajority of 70, 80, or 90 was required for appellate court confirmations, given their importance? Why not unanimity? How about special rules for Supreme Court appointments? It takes just a moment's thought to see that if the judicial filibuster is allowed to survive and thrive, the Senate could effectively put itself in a position to dictate appointments to the president, rather than simply advise and consent to those made by him. This would turn the constitutional scheme on its head and deprive the country of the benefits envisioned by the Framers and explicitly discussed in the Federalist Papers of presidential, rather than congressional, appointments. [my emphases]

This, in turn, speaks to a theme I've struck over the past few years as the DisLoyal Opposition has become more and more extreme: our free system of government can only function, as a practical going concern, when all parties exercise self-restraint, self-discipline, and respect and play by the rules. This is why no minority party had ever attempted to apply the filibuster to the confirmation process prior to two years ago - it was commonly understood to be a tactic that was undemocratic, unconstitutional, and beyond the pale. Once such a Rubicon is crossed, you start down a path that can only lead to anarchy, widespread cynicism for and disaffection from the political process and civic institutions, and consequences for which it is more difficult to over-heat rhetoric.

Berenson picks up the same thread:

The only reason that devices like the filibuster and the blue slip have traditionally been tolerated, at least as a theoretical matter, is that they have been used with great restraint and only in truly exceptional cases. (I am not conceding here, of course, that the filibuster has ever actually been used at all against nominees to the bench.) The total abandonment of that restraint is what has really changed over the last few years, and what has set in motion the current confrontation. [my emphases]

And if Republicans duck that confrontation, they will soon find themselves no longer in a position to win it.

Meanwhile, further evidence that the Democrats are planning for the aftermath of a defeat on the filibuster vote comes in the news, reported by Bob Novak today, that the extreme left is laying the groundwork for a pre-emptive smear campaign against every conceivable Bush SCOTUS selection so massive as to make Joe McCarthy look like Jon Arbuckle (via Captain's Quarters).

On May 5, the U.S. Judicial Conference in Washington received a request from a man named Mike Rice from Oakland, Calif., for the financial disclosure records of U.S. Appeals Court Judge Edith Jones (5th Circuit) of Houston. A 20-year veteran on the bench, Jones is a perennial possibility for the U.S. Supreme Court. The demand for her personal records is part of a major intelligence raid preceding momentous confirmation fights in the Senate.

Jones was not alone as a target, and Rice is not just a nosy citizen. He and Craig Varoga, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, are partners in a California political consulting firm. Their May 5 petition requested financial information on 30 appellate judges in all but one of the country's judicial circuits, including nine widely mentioned Supreme Court possibilities. Varoga & Rice's client: NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Nobody can recall any previous mass request for such disclosures by federal judges. This intelligence raid is financed by the abortion lobby, but it looks to Republicans like a front for Reid and other senators who will consider President Bush's appointments for Supreme Court nominations. But Reid told me that he had heard nothing about this, adding: "It's ridiculous. What do we have [Senate] committees for?" However, the material is certain to be given to Democratic senators well in advance of senatorial deliberations.

The Cap'n draws the analogy to J. Edgar Hoover instead, but the point is equally well made.

Says my friend George Meredith in his most recent email circulation:

The request for Judge Jones’ records is unprecedented. Rice is the snarkier half of a California political consulting partnership which specializes in making slime mountains out of innocuous Republican mole hills. According to Novak, Rice’s partner is Craig Varoga, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. The partner’s client is NARAL Pro-Choice America. Is this picture coming into focus?

Judge Jones is not the only target. Her’s were just one of 30 appellate judges, whose records were requested, including nine who are widely considered to be likely Supreme Court possibilities. Is it possible that Democrats are scouting out slimier options because they don’t believe they can continue to maintain their filibuster assault on constitutional government?

Indeed.

It's an overused expression bordering on cliche (Rush Limbaugh, for one, has beaten it to death), but Democrats right now really are in a panic. And rest assured that they have a political Samson complex on steroids. If they go down, they will not go down quietly.

"Do not go gentle into that good night; rage, rage, against the dying of the light." - Dylan Thomas

The whole Republican Party should brace itself. If we think that breaking the filibuster constitutes "going nuclear," we haven't seen anything yet.