The row over the nomination of John Bolton as US ambassador to the UN was just a skirmish before the real battle: George Bush's nominations to the federal appeals courts, just one level below the supreme court.
In the president's first term, Senate Democrats blocked 10 of his appeals court nominees. After his re-election last November, Bush renominated seven of them, including Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown.
The New York Times believes the pair are eminently unsuitable. Owen, it says, has, while on the Texas supreme court, openly favoured big business and flouted abortion rights. Brown, on the California supreme court, has described New Deal programmes as "socialist revolution".
The Democrats have vowed to use the filibuster, a procedural device, via which politicians attempt to block legislation or a presidential nominee. A filibuster is essentially a time-wasting tactic used by a strongly motivated minority to prevent a vote and usually takes the form of a long speech. Under the rules, the speech may be totally divorced from the subject matter. There have even been cases in which a senator read from a phone directory during a filibustering speech.
The record belongs to Strom Thurmond, a Republican senator who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes in an attempt to block the civil rights act of 1957, although the bill ultimately passed.
The only way to overcome a filibuster is for three-fifths of the senate (60) to limit debate. With 55 senate seats, the Republicans are short of that magic number to overcome filibusters.
In response, the Republican majority leader, Bill Frist, is threatening to change the rules so that a simple majority could strike down a filibuster. Frist, who has presidential ambition for 2008, says the rule change would apply only to judicial nominees, but Democrats are hardly convinced.
Bush yesterday raised the stakes by declaring: "I have a duty to nominate well-qualified men and women to the federal judiciary. The Senate also has a duty to promptly consider each of these nominees on the Senate floor, discuss and debate their qualifications and then give them the up or down vote they deserve."
The president conveniently overlooks the fact that the Senate has confirmed more than 200 of his nominees. Frist himself took part in a filibuster of a Clinton appeals court nominee. Now, because Senate Democrats oppose seven of the president's judicial nominees, the Republicans are prepared to abolish a tradition dating back to 1806, designed to prevent a majority from riding roughshod over a minority. The Los Angeles Times, though, believes the filibuster is an inherently reactionary tool and should be abolished.
Republican threats to do away with the filibuster on judicial nominees has been described as the "nuclear option". Some modicum of collegiality is required in the Senate to get business done. But if Frist gets his way, the Democrats have pledged retaliation that would result in gridlock. The Republicans will have only themselves to blame for paralysis if they blunder ahead.
