LAT: A Shaky Win for Bipartisan Center

[DeepModem Mom]

A Shaky Win for Bipartisan Center
By Janet Hook and Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writers


WASHINGTON -- Monday's last-ditch compromise on confirming federal judges was a striking reassertion of the power of the political center in a bitterly polarized environment, pulling the Senate back from the brink of a crisis that threatened to paralyze the institution and dramatically change its character.

The sternest test of the fragile accord will come when the Senate takes up the next nomination to the Supreme Court, possibly as early as this summer, and partisan pressures intensify.

Still, the agreement -- in which seven moderate Republicans broke ranks from their party and joined seven moderate Democrats -- is an unusual challenge to Bush and GOP leaders who until now have commanded remarkable party discipline on a wide range of issues. It throws a rare obstacle in Republicans' steady march toward the overarching goal of the Bush presidency: to parlay Republicans' slim majority in the country into major changes in policy and in government institutions for years to come....

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The compromise apparently will prevent Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., from implementing a ban on judicial filibusters -- a Senate rules change -- known as the "nuclear option" for its potentially explosive political impact -- that was expected to make it easier for Bush to put more conservative judges on the bench for a lifetime appointment....

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Democrats reserved the right to filibuster future judicial nominations in "extraordinary circumstances." Republicans kept the power to revisit the "nuclear option" if they believe Democrats are filibustering in circumstances that do not reach that standard....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-assess24may24,0,4124610,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines