From Hugh Hewitt:
These are votes which the Republican base will watch closely, and will demand fairness on and conformance to the "Gang of 14" agreement. If Senator Graham, for example, helps kill the Haynes nomination in the Judiciary Committee, that will be laid at Senator McCain's feet and rightly so.
And if any of these three are filibustered, the Constitutional Option will have to be dusted off and deployed, exactly a year after it ought to have been used in the first place.
I agree with Hugh that the 60-odd nominations in the pipeline need to be moved forward. I also agree that the Gang of 14 agreement needs to be enforced. For those of us on the right who have basically given up on Bush and the K Street Gang, solidly conservative judges are about the only thing left on offer by the Republicans. But why is Hugh still pushing to abolish the judicial filibuster. Abolition of the filibuster has always been a bad idea and, as the confirmation of Alito proved, was unnecessary. Just in PR terms, it'd be the GOP equivalent of FDR's court packing plan (or, if you prefer, Gingrich's government shut down). It might play well to a segment of the base, but the center-right majority in this country probably would be turned off by it.
