Nuclear War Averted; Destroying The Republic Will Have To Wait A Few Months

"You think I'm licked! You all think I'm licked! Well I'm not licked and I'm going to stay right here and fight for this lost cause even if this room gets filled with lies like these, and that Taylors and all their armies come marching into this place! Somebody'll listen to me..."
-Jefferson Smith, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington

So there will be no Nuclear Option, no changing of the Senate rules because the Far Right isn't getting everything they want. As the climactic showdown neared, I was going to write an angry moonbat-ish piece (see, I'm picking up the lingo!) about the Religious Right's willingness to nuke the village to save it when low and behold, a handful of reasonable Republicans stepped forward to say that a democracy in which the minority is completely powerless and the majority can steamroll anything it wants through the process and change the rules whenever they aren't getting the results they want is no democracy at all. I always knew you guys were out there!

Now, every good deal leaves all sides secretly feeling like they got screwed, even as they loudly declare victory. Looking around the Left and Right wings of the blogosphere (love that jargon!) there are a lot of angry folks out there who think their party's moderates who made this deal are traitors. But the anger over this deal is a lot more palpable on the Right. This is because for the Religious Right this has always been about putting judges on the U.S. Supreme Court who will overturn Roe v. Wade; in the minds of a lot of influential members of the "values" crowd, anything done to achieve this end is justified no matter how much damage it does to the "small-d" democratic institutions of this country. The Filibuster is in their way, and they thought that this was their chance to destroy it. Undoubtedly this is a loss for the Bill Frist/James Dobson wing of the party, although in the looking-glass world of Backlash Conservatives like them even a loss is sort of a win: It provides more ammunition for their argument that they are being tyrannically oppressed despite controlling every branch of the government.

So who did win? Well, I agree with John McCain that the Senate won. Beyond that, I'm not sure this is the outright victory for the Democrats that some people (like the aforementioned Dobson) think it is. As I understand the deal, the Filibuster survives and enough Republicans agree not to exercize the Nuclear Option to keep the Filibuster safe, at least for this term. In return, Democrats agree not to use the Filibuster for judicial nominees except in "extraordinary circumstances." But there's the rub; who will define "extraordinary circumstances?" Aren't we going to be right back where we started if Democrats feel that Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court is too extreme and Republicans don't agree? Perhaps the Nuclear Option is off the table for now, but I think more likely it's just been pushed back a few months.