Frist Got Da Bomb

Read this hopeful note from the OpinionJournal.com Political Diary:

It looks like Majority Leader Bill Frist is really going to do it. Pull the trigger on the "nuclear" option, that is, in order to stop Democrats' unprecedented filibuster of President Bush's appeals-court nominees.

Mr. Frist said last month he would bring one of Mr. Bush's re-nominated candidates to the floor in February. If Democrats filibuster, he would seek to change Senate Rule XXII to the effect that filibusters of judicial nominees can be stopped by a majority vote. (Right now, a super-majority of 60 Senators is required to close debate and allow a floor vote on judges.) Senator John Cornyn, a Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, tells us his party has the 51 votes necessary to implement the rule change and that Mr. Frist is getting ready to do just that.

One sign that Mr. Frist is serious is the panic on the left. The ultra-liberal People For the American Way announced yesterday that it's leading a national effort to "protect" the judicial filibuster, which the group pretends is an artifact of "more than 200 years" of Senate history. In a memo to journalists yesterday, President Ralph Neas does his best imitation of Winston Churchill when he says that defeating the nuclear option "will take every ounce of effort, skill, focus and perseverance that the progressive community can muster." General Neas's war room is PFAW's "2,500-square foot conference room" outfitted as a "nerve center." "Hundreds of organizations" will be deployed to "save the judiciary," he claims.

In particular, Mr. Neas threatens to target Republican and Democratic Senators who might support Mr. Frist's rule change. Perhaps he's forgotten that one of the reasons Republicans now have a 55-seat majority in the Senate is that voters who were reminded of Democratic obstruction of the President's judicial nominees ended up electing Republicans last November.

Let's hope Frist is not making idle threats. It's time for President Bush to get the judges he wants, and not the lefty ideologues the Senate Dems want.