Over the past four years since Priscilla Owen was nominated for the Fifth Circuit by President Bush, Senators Byrd (D-WV) and Landrieu (D-LA) voted four times to sustain a filibuster of her nomination. When Ms. Owen finally came up for a floor vote in the Senate, both Senators voted in favor. They can now go home to their increasingly red States and say, "I voted for her after I voted against her".

What we know is that both Byrd and Landrieu are just protecting their political backsides in the matter of judicial nominations...they need leftwing donations for their campaigns, so they had to sustain the filibuster; but they also know that their GOP opponents would make massive issue of their votes if they voted against actually confirming a fine, conservative justice like Ms. Owen. All of the polemics and scare quotes were just so much smoke and mirrors; in the end, these two Democratic Senators did what good government required all along...voted to confirm.

This is what is so infuriating about the filibuster compromise; we had the Democrats backs to the wall and could have easily pushed them to break the filibuster. For red State Democrats, with the fate of Daschle fresh before their minds, the thought of bucking American conservatism is a big non-starter. By judicious applications of pressure, we should be able to count on red State Democratic votes in the Senate as a matter of course...but, instead, what we've got is just enough spineless GOPers in the Senate to give these red State Democrats some cover.