Profiles in Flinching

Mack Daddy playa Charles Krauthammer lays the smack down on the Stupid Party with typically brilliant results:

First, the compromise legitimized the principle of the judicial filibuster. Until 2001, not once in more than 200 years had a judicial nominee been denied appointment to the court by Senate filibuster.

The Democrats broke all precedent by systematically using it to block President Bush's nominees in his first term in the hope that they would recapture the presidency in 2004. They did not, and they have continued the filibuster into his second term. This violation of Senate tradition has now been codified in writing as legitimate so long as circumstances ("extraordinary," in the eyes of the beholder) warrant.

The second sure thing is that the seven Republicans who went against their party are the toast of the Washington establishment. On Monday night they came out of the negotiations beaming. And why shouldn't they? They are being hailed as profiles in courage, prepared to put principle ahead of (Republican) party. We will soon see glowing stories in the mainstream press about how they have grown in office. (In Washington parlance, the dictionary definition of "to grow" is "to move left.") After that, the dinner-party circuit, fawning articles about their newfound stature and coveted slots on the Sunday morning talk shows.

Mike DeWine, one of the Magnificent Seven, was heretofore best known for the fact that one of his staffers (subsequently fired) published accounts of her sexual escapades while working in DeWine's Senate office. Now he might be known for something else.

Enter two latecomers, DeWine and Lindsey Graham, who were prepared to vote for the nuclear option but decided to cross the aisle and make the tough choice to join the lionized center. They both say that if the Democrats start to filibuster again, they will defect back to the warm embrace of Frist and go nuclear. Will they be willing to forfeit their newfound celebrity and stature as statesmen? That would be a profile in courage.

Go read it all and if you live in a state with one of these traitors, start finding a REAL conservative to run against them in the primaries. We need TWO DIFFERENT PARTIES, not one media-whoring cabal!