Santorum Assures: Frist will go "Nuclear"...

The Hill is reporting that PA Sen. Rick Santorum is insisting to Conservative activists that Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist is committed to exercising a rules change to ensure that President Bush's nominees receive and up or down vote, circumventing the filibuster tactic that Democrats have been using to prevent such a vote.

Santorum met the leaders Tuesday to dispel growing anxiety among conservatives that Frist was wavering over what some Republicans call the "constitutional" or "Byrd" option - a procedural tactic that would disallow judicial filibusters by a ruling of the Senate chair and a ratifying majority vote.

There has been much concern among Conservatives that the Republican Senate Caucus has been getting weak-kneed on pushing the rules change.

A conservative who requested anonymity for fear of angering the leadership said: "When you have conflicting signals at this late a date, it seriously damages our coalition's ability to support the senators in this." The activist said the message from Santorum was clear: "Man battle stations." Santorum said that he told conservative leaders, "We have to win" and "we have to have the votes" to confirm the president's nominees.

In the meantime, many Republicans - including yours truly - is starting to get impatient and concerned that Frist may be possibly missing an window of opportunity that is slowly slipping away.

When will the GOP leadership exercise the courage to act like a majority in the face of the aggressive political war that the Democrats are hell-bent on waging? The showdown may be coming soon.

Republican aides and conservative activists said that the leadership is most likely to trigger the constitutional option to force a confirmation vote on circuit court nominees Priscilla Owen or Janice Rogers Brown.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has placed Owen on the agenda for a committee business meeting this week and scheduled Brown for next week. That means the soonest Republicans would trigger the tactic for Owen would be April 15 and the soonest for Brown would be April 22, a GOP aide said.

Stay tuned.

Posted by: Gary at 07:05 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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