This NYT report by Sheryl Gay Stolberg hints at the intense behind-the-scenes pressure to toe the party line that Voinovich and other "moderate" Republicans are facing these days:
"Bolton is a perfect example of putting the moderates in an impossible situation," said Senator Lincoln Chafee, the Rhode Island Republican who also sits on the Foreign Relations Committee and who agonized publicly over Mr. Bolton for weeks. "It's a no-win. Either we don't support the president or we vote for a very unpopular pick to represent us at the United Nations." [...]
But here in the Capitol, [moderate Senate Republicans] are so few, said Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, that they quit having their weekly lunches about a year ago.
"Susan and I were there alone for so much of the time," Mr. Specter he said, referring to Senator Susan Collins of Maine, "we worked through all of our conversation and decided to disband."
As Mr. Voinovich's refusal to support Mr. Bolton's nomination demonstrates, "the vanishing center"-as another centrist Republican, Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, often says - can still play a powerful role. There are just four core centrists in the Senate, Mr. Chafee, Ms. Collins, Ms. Snowe and Mr. Specter. They are joined from time to time by mavericks like Senators John McCain of Arizona, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Mr. Voinovich.
The story paints a picture of a self-described "moderate" wing of the Republican party that has been so diminished as to leave the remaining Senators nearly translucent. And yet, in controversial instances like the Bolton nomination, their party needs their votes desperately.
The next squeeze, for the moderates, will be the explosive question of whether Republican leaders should change Senate rules to bar Democrats from using the filibuster, a two-century-old parliamentary tactic, to block the judicial nominees. Dr. Frist is advocating the change, and a confrontation is widely expected next week.
This is going to be a remarkable battle. The nuclear option, banning filibuster, is targeted not only against Democrats but against these moderate Republican Senators. Filibusters exist as a parliamentary technique to help ensure -- if not consensus -- at least general comity in the debates, and act as a moderating force preventing a bare majority from having carte blanche legislative powers. If anyone can understand that, it's the few remaining Republican Senators -- McCain, Chafee, Snowe, Specter, Collins, and even Hagel and Voinovich -- who are still willing to stray from the party lines over particular matters of conscience.
Frist is essentially asking these moderate Senators to vote themselves into the cornfield. Once a 51 vote majority is needed to accomplish even the most extreme of judicial nominees, instead of a significantly harder-to-get nonpartisan 60, Frist and the other Republicans don't need these "moderates". In fact, forget these "moderate" remnants of the Republican party altogether -- once Frist doesn't need their votes, it also means the end of whatever deals they have been able to squeeze from him in exchange for their support. Their power to serve their constituents -- or even to defend themselves from future Frist and White House-launched attacks -- will shrink to nil.
