It's
really "my way or the highway".
President Bush set up a showdown with Senate Democrats on Monday by renominating 20 failed judicial nominees, many of whom had been denounced by critics as "right-wing extremists."
The renewed battle over the nominees promises to produce plenty of fireworks as Bush begins his second term with an expanded Senate Republican majority and still-defiant Senate Democrats.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, has threatened to change the Senate's rules to prevent any more procedural hurdles known as filibusters against judicial nominees.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has vowed Democrats are "not going to cut and run" from any such fight.
Reid's statement on the issue:
The President is at it again with the extremist judges.
Last year, the Senate worked to confirm 204 of the President's judicial nominees and rejected only the 10 most extreme. This confirmation record is better than that achieved by President Clinton, President George H.W. Bush and President Reagan. Despite our unprecedented effort to work with the President in discharging our constitutional duty to advise and consent to his nominees, today he renominated 7 of the 10 rejected nominees.
We should not divert attention from other pressing issues facing this nation to redebate the merits of nominees already found too extreme by this Chamber.
To replay this narrow and completed debate demonstrates the Bush Administration's failure to craft a positive agenda for the American people.
Bush has never been interested in building concensus. Despite the best confirmation record in a generation, Bush refuses to brook even the mildest dissent.