Deal

Well, they made a deal. This (via Drudge) strikes me as really good outcome for the democrats. Not only does Frist lose, he can't even blame Reid and the rest of the Dems for beating him. Reid gets to declare that the filibuster he fought for is still intact and that cooler heads prevailed. Frist gets...nothing. Not quite a complete emasculation, but close. Out of the nominees in question, only three have been promised majority votes, one of which, according to Lindsay Graham (on MSNBC), will be defeated on a bipartisan basis. A lot of the Dem base seems to be angry about the fact that Owen got through, but when it's 55 to 44, total victory just wasn't going to happen. Part of the deal was a promise from 7 GOP Senators not to vote for a rule change eliminating the filibuster. Sounds good, I guess, but in light of this,

"Many of these nominees have waited for quite some time to have an up-or-down vote and now they are going to get one. That's progress," said press secretary Scott McClellan said. "We will continue working to push for up or down votes for all the nominees."

I'm not so sure. Sounds like this battle isn't over to me. Still, the GOP leadership, and the Religious Right that talked them onto this precipice, needed a big slap in the face over this, and it looks like they got one.