Andrew Sullivan: If Bush beats the blather, his placemen win

[emad]

May 15, 2005

It really wasn’t supposed to be this way. Last November saw George W Bush re-elected with a more comfortable margin than in 2000. The Senate and house saw small Republican gains. The religious right foresaw a legislative rapture.

The Democrats began to feel a little like the Tories, with less reason. They won 48% of the vote, after all. And yet it seemed as if history, especially after last January’s elections in Iraq, favoured a Bush boom.

Instead we have the Bush bump. Last week the Senate foreign relations committee, despite a Republican majority, decided to offer no recommendation on the nomination of John Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations. One Republican senator said he’d vote against the nomination when it comes to the Senate floor soon. He called Bolton “the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be”.

At the same time, Washington is girding itself for a nailbiting month of brinkmanship as the Bush administration’s Senate allies threaten to abolish the chequered tradition of the Senate filibuster against judicial nominees.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1612396,00.html