I caught the so called agreement to avoid the filibuster showdown, and what a show it was. The ‘moderates’ will allow Priscilla Owens, Janice Rogers Brown and David William Pryor to go to a floor vote. They make no decisions on two others (Saad and Myers). And they withold the right to use the filibuster for extraordinary cases. Which means the dems will wait for a better case to fight over.

What a joke. They all looked so pleased with themselves, but what happened? The dems delayed the showdown (for maybe a week or two) to buy time. Bush is getting his nominees voted on. Janice Rogers Brown will be the next Supreme Court Justice.

The moderates did try and give the dems a face saving way out to pretend they won something here – but it is so transparent it will not work. Watch the cons/reps celebrate and the liberal fringe go ballistict with this attempted retreat. Watch Bush’s and Congress’ ratings go up as well.

Via the drudgereport

Ed Morrissey’s initial response is all or nothing, but the dems have nothing out of this.

Powerline is also not pleased, especially with the coddling of Byrd (there they have a point) -but once people realize the dems did nothing but agree to vote for cloture on three nominees I expect the silliness of this lame attempt to spin a democrat defeat will become apparent.

Michelle Malkin has a good rundown on the speeches, but no response yet.

UPDATE: OK, so Byrd is part of the so called compromise (democrat retreat). But clearly, if you were going to convince the dems to surrender you would need Byrd. And how do you trick Byrd into surrender? Present a deal that is all show and nothing for the democrats except delaying the fight to a later day. Bush and Frist won the fight this day. And Byrd is showing how worried he is about his election chances next year. I am not sure what the conservatives were looking for, but so far I see no down side beyond PR BS.

KOS readers get it:

what exactly did the dems get? sounds like a sell out… vote for colture [sic] on owens, brown and pryor, no other commitments

you must be nuts if you think the Repubs will vote down Owens and Brown.
Major Garret (Fox) just summed it up. He said that from here on out, any judicial nominees similar to Owens and Brown cannot be considered extreme because they were agreed to in this deal. As I’ve said before, they get their judges, we get a right that we’ve promised not to use. If we do use it for extreme nominees, the Repubs will just claim that we broke the agreement and go nukular again. We got screwed.

But, let’s wait and see. If Owens and Brown are confirmed I will absolutely agree that this ‘compromise’ was the absolute worst thing that could have happened for us.

This is the worst possible outcome if those three judges get approved. This is a horrible day. Kos, you are wrong. Frist will use this compromise as cover to get these horrible justices approved, then he will just use the nuclear option if Dems try to filibuster Miguel Estrada or whoever the next SC nominee is. This is a big loss for us. I wanted a vote on the Nuclear Option, so at least we could know where we stand. Instead, once again, the “centrists” sell us out because they are too weak-kneed and spineless. Any deal that allows Brown and Owens to go through is unacceptable. Period. Republicans will break their promise whenever they feel like it.

When bush appoints brown to SC, the same hoopla. Obviously, brown is already “not an extremist” because she has been allowed to go through today. Rinse, repeat, Hello SC Justice Janice Brown

My favorite:

thought the stakes didn’t get any higher than they were today. I thought that’s why the DNC and everybody has been spamming me for money for weeks about this. (And getting it.) I thought this situation was the be-all, end-all of the American Way. I’m sick to death of being worked into a frenzy by the so-called leadership of this party, only to be slapped in the face with yet another compromise with lunatics and extremists. Every time we compromise with lunatics and extremists, the country moves further to the right. I’m THIS CLOSE to writing to Dean and Reid and telling them to shove their Democratic Party and just voting Green in future. Yeah, it’ll be a wasted vote, but as far as I can tell, so is a vote for Democrats.