Washington – The 14 moderate U.S. senators who united last spring to preserve the right to block judicial confirmations said they remained united today, though on shaky ground, over Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.
Senators who emerged from a meeting of the so-called Gang of 14 said they hadn’t lost members, even though two in the group earlier this week said they oppose a filibuster of Alito.
“I think what came out of the meeting that is most important is that we haven’t lost two,” Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, one of seven Democrats in the alliance, said after the meeting. “The 14 are still together.”
The meeting today was the first for the group, which also has seven Republicans, since President Bush nominated Alito on Monday.
Senate Judiciary Committee leaders said today they plan to begin confirmation hearings Jan. 9 with a vote by the full Senate targeted for Jan. 20. Bush had wanted the new justice seated by year’s end, but committee chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., said it “simply wasn’t possible” to move that fast.
The Gang of 14 came together in May after Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened a vote on eliminating the right to filibuster judicial appointees, referred to as the “nuclear option.”
The group agreed to uphold the right to filibuster some judge nominees under “extraordinary circumstances” in exchange for up-or-down votes on others.
Earlier this week, two Republicans in the Gang of 14 – Sens. Mike DeWine of Ohio and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina – said they saw no “extraordinary circumstances” in Alito’s nomination that would allow a filibuster.
Both DeWine and Graham largely stood by that position today. But each said in interviews with The Post that if another member of the Gang of 14 thought there were extraordinary circumstances, they would be willing to listen to arguments for a filibuster.
“If someone within (the Gang of 14) thinks (Alito is) an ideologue, I’m willing to listen,” Graham said. But a filibuster by someone outside the group simply on the grounds that Alito is too conservative shouldn’t be allowed, he said.
DeWine said he also would listen to someone within the Gang of 14 arguing that extraordinary circumstances exist. But he said couldn’t imagine any information coming out that would meet those criteria.
“It’s hard for me to envision how he could be filibustered,” said DeWine, who faces a tough re-election campaign in his state.
The Gang of 14’s unity – or lack of it – could have an impact on whether Alito is confirmed, as well as whether the Senate preserves the right to filibuster other court nominees.
While cutting off a filibuster in progress would require 60 Senate votes, forcing the GOP to recruit some Democrats, the nuclear option would take only a simple majority of 51 votes.
Republicans have 55 seats in the Senate, plus the tie-breaker vote of Vice-President Dick Cheney. Subtract the seven Republicans in the Gang of 14 and that leaves only 49 votes.
But the GOP would have enough votes for the nuclear option if two or more in the Gang defected.
No one at today’s meeting argued that there already were grounds for a filibuster, DeWine said.
In the end, it could be irrelevant whether DeWine and Graham defect, said political analyst Norman Ornstein with the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.
“Democrats are not going to filibuster if it looks like there are going to be four or five Democrats who see Alito as a reasonable guy and if Alito comes across as a non-doctrinaire person,” Ornstein said.
But he added that if Democrats do filibuster Alito, Frist likely will feel enormous pressure from the right to eliminate the filibuster, at which point the Gang of 14 could again become crucial.
