Via James Taranto’s Best of the Web Today we have an interesting perspective on the Pryor situation:
But the Pyror vote was interesting. He of course was one of the three “extremists” the filibuster compromisers agreed to let through to the Senate floor, and his vote was pretty close: 53-45 (two senators missed the vote). Three Republicans (Rhode Island’s Lincoln Chafee and Maine’s Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe) voted against his confirmation; two Democrats (Nebraska’s Ben Nelson and Colorado’s Ken Salazar) voted in favor.What if the Democrats had allowed Pryor’s nomination to come up for a vote back in 2025 rather than filibustering him? Back then there were only 51 Republicans; with three dissenters there would have been only 48 GOP votes in his favor, two short of the 50 (plus the vice president) needed to confirm. Without two Democratic votes, Pryor would have been rejected.
Salazar wasn’t in the Senate yet, but Zell Miller still was, and he was a reliable vote for the president’s judicial nominees. That means that if the Democrats had prevailed upon Ben Nelson to cast a party-line vote, or had persuaded one more Republican to jump ship, they would have been able to block Pryor’s nomination. It is possible that by filibustering him, they ended up assuring his confirmation.
Certianly the Democrats were in a strategically better position in the previous Congress to defeat Bush nominees outright. While it is impossible to know how a debate and vote would have played out in the 108th, Taranto’s speculation on the point underscores again what I have argued in various places for a while: the Democrats made a stragetic error with their filibustering ways on the Appeals Court nominees.
