Frist blows Graham's and DeWine's cover on judicial nominations deal

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and his aides have denied Rep. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) assertion to home-state conservative leaders that he and Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) acted as emissaries for Frist in negotiations among 14 Republican and Democratic centrists that resulted in a compromise last month on judicial filibusters.

Dr. Oran Smith, president of the Palmetto Family Council based in Columbia, S.C., said, “Graham has been meeting with groups of conservative opinion leaders to explain his actions and to comfort conservative leaders by assuring them he was sent by the Republican leadership to broker a deal.”

As a result of Graham’s assurances, conservatives’ anger over Graham’s role in the controversial deal has slackened, Smith said.

“There’s a mixture of residual anger and ‘let’s wait and see’ because he said he was sent as an envoy and dispatched by the leadership, he and DeWine,” Smith added.

Joe Mack, the director of public policy for the South Carolina Baptist Convention, who met with Graham and discussed his role in the brokering the deal, confirmed that Graham told him “words to that effect that he was assisting the leadership.”

But when asked whether he had dispatched Graham and DeWine as emissaries, Frist replied firmly “No. No.”

Amid a conservative backlash to the deal, particularly against DeWine in Ohio and Graham in South Carolina, Frist aides have told conservative leaders that they did not encourage the two lawmakers to forge a deal to avoid a floor vote on shielding judicial nominees from filibuster.

Jeff Mazzella, executive director of the Center for Individual Freedom, said, “Frist’s staff and other have assured us that they were not behind that deal and we are satisfied that they are committed to moving forward with up-or-down votes on all of the president’s nominees.”

Sean Rushton, executive director of the Committee for Justice, said, “I’ve heard it from one of Frist’s liaison people that it’s not true.”

Graham did not answer yes or no when asked by The Hill if he was an emissary for Frist during the negotiations. Instead, he described a nuanced role.

“Both leadership teams were very well aware of what was going on,” he said, referring to the Republican and Democratic leaders.

He added that “everyone knew what was going on” and that some lawmakers liked it and some didn’t.

Both Graham and DeWine have been the targets of intense conservative anger since they appeared alongside five other Republican senators and seven Democrats last month to announce a deal they struck on judicial nominees who Democrats had blocked.

The deal was announced the evening before Frist had planned to trigger the so-called “nuclear option” to strip senators of the power to filibuster judicial nominees. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the majority whip, had announced a few weeks before that Frist had enough Republican votes to execute the tactic.

“I talked to McConnell and Frist during the negotiations,” Graham said. “I think Senator Frist’s primary goal was to change the rules and, barring that, felt it was better to live and fight another day.”

Conservative leaders in South Carolina responded angrily. Mack, with the Southern Baptist Convention, said “a number of our have been concerned about that role and were looking for a vote to break a filibuster.”

Thomas Ravenel, a wealthy developer who self-financed much of his race against Sen. Jim DeMint (R) in a GOP Senate primary last year, announced shortly afterward that he would consider challenging Graham in 2008.

In Ohio, conservatives responded with similar ire, saying that DeWine’s role in the filibuster negotiations was the latest in a series of actions and positions he has taken at odds with them.

Conservatives said they would retaliate by working against Pat DeWine, the senator’s son, who ran earlier this month for the seat vacated by retiring Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). Despite having the highest name recognition in the race and having outraised his opponents significantly, the young DeWine finished a distant fourth in the race.

“His showing was extremely poor,” said Dr. John Wilke, head of the Life Issues Institute, an anti-abortion group based in Cincinnati. “A showing that bad after that good a start has reasons. Some people are saying that Mike’s business of being in the ‘Gang of 14’ hurt Pat.”

The ongoing battle between Republicans and Democrats over the makeup of the federal judiciary has been one of the highest concerns of social conservatives.

After the judges deal was struck, Ohio conservatives led by Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values, another Cincinnati-based group, stepped up its efforts to find a candidate to challenge DeWine in the 2006 Republican primary.

As conservatives in Ohio and South Carolina responded angrily to news of the Senate centrists’ deal on judges, Major Garrett, a Fox News correspondent, citing “senior Republican sources,” reported that “Frist and the Bush White House were worried enough about possibly losing the vote to end the judicial filibusters that they dispatched two conservatives, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and Ohio’s Mike DeWine, to cut the best possible deal.”

“He will do anything he can to cover his tracks,” Burress said. “I call upon him to prove that, or he will be exposed as a flat out liar. I use that word very carefully. My sources tell me. I have people close to what’s going on up there that that’s not what happened.”

When asked about the Fox report, DeWine said, “If you look at the transcript, I never said that. What I said was that we had — people inside the meeting were talking to leaders — both sides were talking to leaders. But I never said that I was an emissary at all.”

“Lindsey and I got involved at the same time,” he added. “We looked at a early proposal and had the same reaction, that we couldn’t have an agreement where we would agree that under any circumstances we would not use the constitutional option,” the Republicans’ term for the nuclear option.

With Frist’s speech, we KNOW the real culprit was the Senate as a whole. It basically appointed a committee of 14. While the rest of the Senators entertained and kept their bases preoccupied on CSPAN, the committee was at work finding a negotiated settlement. Have you heard ONE GOP senator, call for retribution against the Rino’s? Have you heard GWB scream out in righteous indignation? No, and we never will.

"You can always ease tensions and avoid confrontations by surrendering. You can always postpone a showdown, even when that simply lets the problem fester and grow worse....Some Republicans may take comfort from the fact that they still have the option of changing the Senate rules in the future if the Democrats violate the spirit of their deal. But, once you have had the votes to win and wimped out instead, there is little reason to think that the weak sisters and opportunists on your side will be with you the next time high noon rolls around...While members of both parties are trying to put a good face on this political deal and the media have gushed about this "bipartisan" agreement, Republican Senator Charles Grassley was one of the few who called a spade a spade, when he characterized what happened as "unilateral disarmament" by the Republicans...If it was just the Republican Party that lost in this confrontation, that would be a minor partisan matter. What is of major importance is that the American people lost a golden opportunity that may not come again in this generation."

- Thomas Sowell

"Some incorrigibly naive conservatives say Democrats won't be able to get away with blocking "conservative" judges in the future, having agreed not to block Brown, Pryor and Owen, who everyone agrees are originalists and "conservatives." But Democrats can simply say that by agreeing not to block a vote on these three, they weren't conceding the nominees weren't "extraordinary," but that they were an acceptable, short-term compromise in exchange for the right to block similarly conservative nominees in the future...Republicans have also bestowed upon Democrats a public relations victory by implying that it was the Republicans, not Democrats, who were breaking with historical precedent and violating the spirit of the Constitution. In short, Republicans had the moral and historical high ground and voluntarily surrendered it to a militant Democrat minority by tacitly agreeing to a false version of the facts and history."

- David Limbaugh

"Never has a majority party proved to be so spineless. Republicans, lest we forget, constitute 55 out of 100 senators and have the power to do what they please. Instead, they capitulated. It is now crystal clear that unless Republicans own almost 60 seats, rules will not be changed; unless Republicans own almost 70, cloture will never be invoked on a major issue. If that doesn't discourage the Republican base, nothing will."

- Ben Shapiro

"One may argue that a compromise is durable to the extent its signers make genuine sacrifices. In this compromise, conservatives and moderates have sacrificed resorting to the constitutional option that would confirm judicial nominees by a simple majority. The left has sacrificed three nominees it would have lost anyway, while thwarting two and retaining the right to apply a Senate rule of a required supermajority (60 percent to break a filibuster) not only to all other district and appellate nominees, but to nominees to the big enchilada - the Supreme Court."

- Ross Mackenzie

"It is not a great deal for two nominees who have been accorded a nice wake having been thrown overboard at sea. (And) everyone should also clearly see that ultimately, nothing has been settled when a vacancy arises on the U.S. Supreme Court."

- George Allen

"Bill Frist, who should have got over queasiness at the sight of blood a long time ago, showed up the next day still as white as John Brown's ghost and tried to spin defeat as victory. He was joined in his pitiful enterprise by the White House, putting out a brave message that nobody believes, winning hoots and hollers from everybody. The sly, smug smile on Nancy Pelosi's face in the photograph on Page One said it all: The pussycat who swallowed the canary, feet, beak, squeak, feathers, fuss and all. Outnumbered and all but unarmed, the Democrats continue to work their intimidating mastery over Republicans mired, probably permanently, in the minority-party mind-set....The seven senators who went over the hill at the sound of the guns woke up at dawn the next morning, impatient as 6-year-olds on Christmas morning, expecting to see their profiles on the Style section front of The Washington Post: John McCain, firing up "the Doubletalk Express," his presidential campaign bus; John Warner, charming little old ladies who imagine him to be the courtly, harmless old Virginia ham of Victorian caricature, and young Master Lindsey Graham, eager to tutor George W. Bush on Social Security reform and dreaming of beating out Chuck Hagel as John McCain Lite.

- Wesley Pruden

"If the "maverick" Republicans had a slogan, it would be: "Always surrender from a position of strength...Chuck Schumer could be the last Democrat in the Senate and the new rule would be: Unanimous votes required for all Senate business. But at least we could count on Sens. Lindsey Graham, Mike DeWine, John McCain, John Warner, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Lincoln Chafee to strike a deal forcing Schumer to agree not to block the 99 other senators except in "extraordinary circumstances."

- Ann Coulter

Maybe the best rejoinder to anyone who thinks these Senators were in it for anything but themselves.

"In any compromise between Good and Evil, it is only Evil that can profit."
- Ayn Rand

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