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Senate Republicans plan to take a more confrontational approach with Democrats on judicial nominees, hoping parliamentary tactics and the bully pulpit of their presidential nominee will break a logjam over the politically volatile issue.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), a centrist who is spearheading the negotiations within the party, said Tuesday that the options range from polite discussions to “shutting down the Senate.” His more conservative colleagues have all but ruled out the former.
The pressure comes as leaders for both parties said Tuesday that there had been no movement on the long-simmering stalemate over judicial nominees, despite a brief detente Monday between the White House and Senate Democrats that led to the confirmation of Mark Filip as the second-ranking official at the Justice Department.
Republicans want to seize on that stalemate to energize conservatives whom they fear will sit out this election because of wariness towards their presumptive nominee, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Conservative activist leaders and Senate Republicans are reaching out to bring McCain back to the Senate and talk about the issue on the campaign trail, saying doing so would bring a national spotlight to the stalemate and pressure Democrats to back away from their opposition to President Bush’s nominees. At the same time, his return could help him make inroads with conservatives still angry at his central role in the so-called “Gang of 14” in 2005, which allowed some Bush nominees to be confirmed while preserving Democrats’ right to filibuster.
A McCain spokeswoman says the senator “remains willing to assist in any way he can to move forward the confirmation of the president’s judicial nominees.”
“The fact is that we can play a political game — if they really want to play the political game on judges, Republicans will win,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a Judiciary Committee member, who said that the time for “playing nice” had passed.
Democrats say that Republicans are intentionally trying to turn the nominees into election-year fodder since Bush has repeatedly ignored senators’ advice and proposed far-right conservatives the majority would not support.
“It’s understandable that the Republicans would now want to move things quickly” with Bush’s time at the White House running out, said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). “But if they’d bring us the right nominees and are willing to cooperate on a bipartisan basis, I think we might be able to make some progress.”
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