Frist Takes the Lead in the Anti-Alito Campaign

Are Republicans counting the days until Bill Frist's term as Senate majority leader is over? He's not running for reelection to the body, presumably because he's still planning to run for president in 2008. Somehow I don't see that panning out, but in the meantime, while he's still top dog in the Senate chamber, maybe the Democrats can put him to good use. As we saw in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Alito, Democrats are having a hard time mounting any serious opposition to the nomination. Sure, they were raising a few good points, but they couldn't work out any coordinated line of questioning or argument against him and no momentum to carry through when the full Senate debates the nomination before giving him its up-or-down vote. A few Dems are coming out ahead of time and announcing their intention to vote against Alito, but in the grand scheme of things, so what? Without some unforeseen damning revelation, Alito's got the votes. A filibuster is the only thing with a chance of stopping him, and the Dems have hardly set the stage to pull that off successfully.

Enter Bill Frist to the rescue. Last night, while touring some Republicans around the Senate chambers, he was heard to say that Alito would be the "worst nightmare of liberal Democrats." Not that this is much of a secret at this point, but the sentiment carries quite a bit more weight coming out of the mouth of the Senate majority leader than that of, say, Teddy Kennedy. Thanks, Bill. If the Democrats can't pull together their own offensive against Alito, I'm glad we can count on you to kick them back into shape.