Boffoblog

Cato Cave-In

A couple posts ago, I picked up on a theme that Josh Marshall and others have written about, the double talk by Republicans about Social Security privatization.  Though the right's policy machine, led on this issue by Cato, had always called it privatization, once GOP leaders realized in August 2002 the electoral hit they were taking on the issue they decided it needed an extreme makeover as "personal retirement accounts."

One aspect I find fascinating is the capitulation of Cato itself to the rhetoric of doubleplusgood retirement accounts.  The obvious way it manifested itself was in the name of the project.  As Brad DeLong wrote at the time, shortly after the NRCC memo

in lockstep obedience to this change of party line ... Ed Crane's non-partisan independent thinktank changed the name of its project from "Social Security Privatization" to "Social Security Choice."

The shift Cato made -- yes, to repeat DeLong's smirk-laden line, "non-partisan independent thinktank" -- was more than just the project's name.  Take a look at their publications before and after the NRCC memo and you can see they were every bit a part of the marketing campaign.  First, a selection among the many reports and op-eds written on Social Security pre-memo:

• Stephen Moore, "Social Security: A Ticking Time Bomb," undated
• Peter J. Ferrara, "A Plan for Privatizing Social Security," April 30, 1997
• Jose Pinera, "Time to Privatize Social Security," April 10, 1998
• Michael Tanner, "The Candidates and Social Security," December 20, 1999
• Andrew Biggs, "The Promise of Privatization," March 9, 2001
• Andrew Biggs, "Will the President's Plan for Privatization Take the Security out of Social Security?" June 3, 2002

The most obvious thread running through these was that "privatization" was a term used quite openly and clearly throughout.  While the details of policy proposals differ, in each case when the question was considered of diverting some money collected through payroll taxes to private investment accounts it was labeled "privatization," here by supporters of such a plan.

Now, let's look at a few pieces they published post-memo:

• Michael Tanner, "Social Security and the 2002 Election," November 7, 2002
• Lea Abdnor, "A Better Way to Fund Retirement," November 5, 2003
• Michael Tanner, "The 6.2 Percent Solution: A Plan for Reforming Social Security," February 17, 2004
• Berna Yigit Brannon, "A Social Security Plan to Last," August 3, 2004

There are several aspects worth noting from these and the other articles on Cato's site.  First, they took the advice of the NRCC to heart in nearly eliminating direct references to "privatization."  There was an awkward transition period, to be sure, since no doubt the rhetoric rubbed a few libertarians at Cato the wrong way.  Take, for instance, the piece from September 18, 2002, entitled "A GOP Surrender on Social Security?"  (A coauthor, Stephen Moore, had left his position as Director of Fiscal Studies at Cato to found Club for Growth in 1999, but retained the title of senior fellow at Cato; he was one of the coauthors of the memo to the NRCC discussed in the Dionne column complaining about the new rhetoric.)

Second and more subtly, after September of 2002 on those occasions when the word is used by Cato writers it is placed in quotations marks.  Is it because they are using the word ironically?  Because it's not really privatization after all?  Or because they are trying to undermine its meaning at the same time they use its synonyms?  I vote for #3.

Third, take a look at the list of articles and position papers on the page labeled "Social Security Reform Plans" and you will see an abrupt shift in focus after the Brannon article of August 3, 2004.  After that date not a single piece is written in favor of privatization and instead all of the focus is to attack the Democrats.  In other words, when one is losing the rhetorical war the last line of defense is offense.  And what better time than in the midst of an election.

Looking at the sum of Cato's writing on Social Security privatization, and it is substantial, it is apparent that despite whatever intellectual independence the organization enjoyed earlier in its lifetime, certainly over the last two years and on this issue it has become simply a mouthpiece for the Republican Party. 

E.J. Dionne Read the Tea Leaves

A little over two years ago, E.J. Dionne wrote a characteristically prescient column entitled "Election Season Flip-Flops" which reflects very well the politics of the last two months on Social Security privatization.  You'll recall, at the time Republicans were getting hit right and left for their support of the issue, and so decided to change course by changing the name.

Democrats in many cases didn't do enough to keep the public's eye on the ball and instead resorted to talk about the Republicans' "secret plans" to privatize the program.  Not far from the truth, but framed in that way it conceded to the GOP their rhetoric and made the Dems' claims sound shady and conspiratorial, undercutting the power of the argument.  The NRCC memo had its intended effect, especially with the remarkable consistency Republicans showed in following Tom Davis's recommendations.

That's not to say that everyone on the right bought into the new language.  As I wrote yesterday, Bob Novak quoted the Club for Growth as expressing outrage that Republicans would run away from privatization.  Then Dionne does the heavy analytical lifting for Novak.  First, if we are to have an honest debate about the issue, we need to use honest language.  He writes:

Let's tip our hats to Moore and Rhodes [of Club for Growth], who would prefer that privatization be debated honestly. "We now have a number of candidates in close races who are forced to explain why they were once for private investment account options and now they are against it," they wrote Davis. "That is a losing proposition."

Referring to the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in South Dakota, Moore and Rhodes continued: "We are concerned that if Republicans denounce this crucial economic reform (as some candidates like John Thune are doing), even if we win in November, the victory will be to what end? We will set back the move to modernize Social Security by five years or more."

Second, the rhetorical change had nothing to do with a shift in position and everything to do with a shift in slogan in an election year:

Last month Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, acknowledged to The Post's Jonathan Weisman that his party's current flight from privatization is dictated by electoral politics.

"In order for there to be an honest debate on Social Security, Democrats have to lose this election," Schmidt said. "Only after they've lost another election where they've put all their chips on the Social Security issue will honest-minded Democrats step forward to work on the issue."

And this is where Dionne really nails it.  The GOP strategy, put simply, was to defeat Democrats on issues other than Social Security and then to use the victory to justify privatizing Social Security.  The mandate thing.  Sound familiar?  Dionne's words from more than two years ago could have been written this past October:

Which makes you wonder: Even if Democrats lose this election because of Iraq, will Republicans -- no matter how hard they try to kill the Social Security issue -- choose to interpret the Democrats' defeat as reason to revisit Social Security privatization? Personally, I prefer Moore and Rhodes. They are willing to make their case without evasion and to say the same thing both before Election Day and after.

And that's the way big-time electoral politics is played.  Thing is, this is one issue where the public starts out clearly on the Dems' side which makes it hard for Republicans to play the mandate game here.  If they wanted a fight, they've got one.

Doubletalk on Privatization

As I mentioned, Josh Marshall has a little contest running for readers to submit quotes (from actual, reasonably reliable news sources) showing GOP supporters of privatization actually using that word to describe it, and also to isolate instances of obvious hypocrisy when they conspicuously run away from the term.

This is more than just a game, however, because ever since late August 2002 when the NRCC handed down the decree that all permutations of "privatize" are to be excised from the Republican vocabulary, they have also tried to leverage that to bully reporters into not using the term either.  By refusing to call a spade a spade, they want to politicize the word "spade."  By showing, as the Post did, their obvious inconsistency and hypocrisy it undercuts that argument and frees reporters to call it like everyone sees it.

As TPM wrote at the time, the NRCC memo, which was spread throughout the party, was lambasted by the right and left.  My favorite was an article in National Review by Ramesh Ponnuru, at least as much for who says it as what is said.  Conservative lobbyists weren't necessarily happy about the marketing relaunch, either.  Bob Novak wrote in his column on September 22 of that year:

Rep. Tom Davis, the House Republican campaign chairman, has called on the party's candidates to stay away from the issue, and especially the word "privatize." Steven Moore, chairman of the supply-side Club for Growth, said in a memo to Davis, "Republicans must run ON the issue of creating Social Security private investment account options, not AWAY from it."

Another feature I like about the contest is that it nicely harnesses the power of blogs and the internet.  Marshall recruits his large and interested readership to scour all resources available to them to do some oppo research, loosely coordinated by him.  The results will be public domain, of course, but due to the nature of the Social Security debate the truth only helps the Democrats.

Here are my contributions to the database.  First, Rove himself -- though ultraorthodox when it comes to excising "privatize" now -- had this to say on CNN on August 13, 2000:

On Social Security privatization, encouraging private personal retirement accounts, [Dick] Cheney was for them.

In one fell swoop, we have the VP and the GOP's Rasputin using the old language, and Rove also equates "privatization" with "private accounts," the new and supposedly focus group-friendly language of today.

Then, once the NRCC memo went out, not only did GOP candidates stop using "privatization" but many actively denied any support for such a plan, such as Norm Coleman did in Minnesota.  National Journal on October 5, 2002 reports the reaction of one of the most ardent supporters of privatization in the House:

In the view of Rep. Jim McCrery, R-La., a key member of the House Ways and Means Committee, Republican candidates aren't boxing themselves in on the issue. "Most Republicans say they oppose Social Security privatization," McCrery said. "That doesn't hurt us. So far, only one or two have said they have a problem with personal retirement accounts."

That certainly exposes the game even more clearly than the NRCC's directive did: Personal retirement accounts are doubleplusgood!

Some smart politicians in the GOP were already well aware of the danger the word posed.  Here is WH Chief of Staff Andy Card a month after Bush's first inauguration on Meet the Press, February 25, 2001:

MR. RUSSERT: The president talked during the campaign about privatizing Social Security. Will there be anything in this budget to do that?

MR. CARD: Well, the $ 2.6 trillion of the surplus that will be set aside for Social Security leaves room for us to move toward reforming Social Security and the president will have things to say about Social Security and the need to reform it in the address that he delivers Tuesday night.

MR. RUSSERT: Will he talk about privatizing?

MR. CARD: He'll talk about a plan that would bring us to a more rationale means of having Social Security so that more Americans can be secure in the confidence that Social Security will be there.

Evasive much?  Which explains this evolution in Rick Santorum's rhetoric, a prominent supporter in the Senate.  First, from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  on October 1, 1995:

Santorum ''is a supporter of the concept of gradually privatizing Social Security and raising the retirement age,'' his Washington press secretary, Mike Mihalke, said.

And here's what Santorum has to say in the same paper five years later on April 19, 2000:

[Santorum] also rejected Democratic accusations that he favored "privatizing" the Social Security system.

Now where would they have gotten that idea?

The Republican doubletalk on Social Security is real and politically potent if they are permitted to get away with it.  So get to work and help put this database of quotes together.  I look forward to seeing what everyone finds.  (Apparently Marshall promises a T-shirt for the especially industrious.)

Another Powell Leaves

Michael Powell will leave the FCC as soon as the Senate confirms a replacement, according to the AP.  And not a moment too soon.

Most have focused on the FCC's overzealous and hypocritical pursuit of obscenity on broadcasts.  What I think has been more dangerous under his watch was the rapid and serious consolidation of the industry.  It was a trend that had arisen prior to Powell becoming chair, but accelerated under his watch as the commission systematically dismantled roadblocks to the centralization of media.

I'd like to see the Senate exercise some real scrutiny over the president's next nominee to the FCC rather than the perfunctory review such regulatory nominations often get.

And, as CNN notes, real speculation begins as to Powell's political ambitions.

Every Day Is an Accountability Moment

Bush said in his Washington Post interview that he had his accountability moment in the 2004 election.  There had also been much talk about a mandate for such things as Social Security privatization, though the polling shows little basis for it, as I discussed.  I have also said in the past that the mandate is an illusory thing that has power to the extent members of Congress believe that the public cares.  This much we know.

Nevertheless, it is interesting if a bit disconcerting to find that Ari Fleischer agrees with me, at least on that bit about the nature of mandates.  In hunting for quotes for Josh Marshall's privatization parlor game (all for a worthy cause), I came across this exchange in a WH press conference on Nov. 6, 2002, between Fleischer and Helen Thomas (emphasis added):

QUESTION: Does the president consider there's some mandate to fulfill his agenda -- going to war with Iraq, privatizing Social Security, weakening the Civil Service Commission and so forth?

FLEISCHER: Helen! you sound like a commercial that didn't work!

(scattered laughter)

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) -- didn't you?

FLEISCHER: Number one, the president has not made any decisions about war with Iraq. As you know, the president has gone to the United Nations and asked the United Nations to help preserve the peace by passing a strong and effective resolution that will make Saddam Hussein disarm.

But the president was heartened by last night's results. And the president believes it's a reflection of the strong reflection of the candidates that we had running across the country and that the results are really a testament to those individuals.

QUESTION: So it's not a mandate?

FLEISCHER: Well, I think issues of mandates are best left to the voters to judge. And you will have your ultimate test every time a vote comes up on the floor of the House and the Senate to judge whether or not the president's agenda will be able to move forward.

Indeed.  And with each passing day it seems more likely the president will fail in his most audacious attempt to cash in on a "mandate," Social Security privatization.

(Of course, this exchange is also worth reading to remind us once again of how utterly disingenuous the WH was in the run-up to war.)

Second to None

David Greenberg waxes nostalgic in Slate about Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address.  It is a good read, but for my money the only presidential inaugural address which is timeless is Lincoln's second inaugural address.  Even Washington's first address, while important, is also grounded in the politics of the time and, to modern ears, at moments sounds archaic.

Lincoln, alone among re-elected presidents, does not waste effort talking about past accomplishments; even those presidents with little to brag about cannot resist the moment.  The focus is not on him but on the task at hand for the country, and so there is not a hint of hubris, and the briefest mention of self-identifying pronouns and references.  If anything, quite the opposite.  Nor does he try to give assurances about the future, though there were many at the time who surely wanted that.  He speaks simple truths in short, declarative sentences.  The speech itself is short and direct.  He, alone among re-elected presidents, understands the moment.  And is there any better final paragraph in all of American oratory?

I know, I'm hardly alone in my regard for Lincoln's second inaugural.  Even so, it pays to re-read it and to heed it.  Thankfully, it's also a lot shorter than Bush's.

And that's all I'll say about today's pomp and circumstance.  Lincoln's speech after the jump...

Verdict on the Exit Polls

The exit poll report is out, and the results are useful, if rather prosaic.  After ruling out other sources of error, it comes down to the way the polls were administered in local precincts, including the role of interviewers, leading to higher response rates among Kerry voters.  The Mystery Pollster has a nice discussion of it.

I may have more to say about it in the future, but for now I hope it puts to rest the conspiracy theories that hinged on the exit poll results circulating on November 2nd.  All polls have some systematic error, though it's not something most pollsters talk about. Instead, the focus tends to be on the random error which is easily quantifiable and varies directly with sample size.   That is not necessarily a reason to dismiss all poll results as hopelessly inaccurate as some have been saying, however, because much of that systematic error is fairly well understood, and for a well-administered survey it is also small.  Political Scientist John Brehm of the University of Chicago wrote an important book on the subject a decade ago called the Phantom Respondents.

At the same time, there is a tradeoff inherent in any sampling between accuracy and cost.  The measures one might take to reduce sources of systematic error (not to mention enlarging the sample to reduce the margin of random error) are also more expensive, perhaps prohibitively so.  In the case of these exit polls, that includes more thorough screening and training of interviewers.  The problems are obviously magnified when an election is close, as this one was in key states.

The efficient solution arrived at by pollsters in most situations is to accept the risk of some systematic error along with the random error in order to keep costs reasonable.  The problem, of course, is that we cannot always anticipate all sources of error, and we do not know beforehand their precise magnitude (though we might make a guess).

Many of the most important advances in understanding systematic error, especially interviewer-related error, were made in the 1940s and 1950s.  But as this report shows, half a century later we still have lessons to learn and absorb.

Sponge Worthy

As James Dobson shows, never let the facts get in the way of  attempts to rally your supporters.  Now, according to the New York Times, he is going after Spongebob Squarepants for being pro-gay.  Damn you, Tinky Winky!  Will your homosexual recruitment have no end?

Read the story and you see that it arose out of confusion over the names of two organizations, one of which (not the Spongebob group) does support gay youth, and the fact that Spongebob (along with the bisexual Barney and questioning Johnny Neutron) has done pro-multicultural tolerance ads for TV.  While the foundation creating the ads supports tolerance for sexual identity, it is not mentioned specifically in the spots.  Then again, Spongebob holds hands with his friend Patrick Starfish, and you know what that means.

But Dobson is sticking by his story, come hell or high heels.

Nelson Sees the Light

Buried in the Washington Post's story about Bush's second term plans, there is this paragraph about the perspective of one crucial Dem vote:

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who broke ranks with many in his party to support all three of Bush's tax cuts, said Bush must be more flexible. "If he is able to reach out to Democrats in the development of policy rather than having his staff present it as a take-it-or-leave-it basis, it would foster more support," he said. "Last term it seemed like a lot of the time his policy people would work with me and his political people would work on me."

Well, it took him a good long while to realize, but Nelson finally gets it.  The first term showed that Bush only talks with those who already agree with him, as he indicated again just this week on Social Security privatization in the Post interview, and even then the GOP won't hold back in going for the jugular.  Dishonor among thieves.

Now the moderate Dems like Nelson know the game and will be ready for it, which makes it easier for the party to hold together on these key questions like Social Security.  Bush has created his own political dilemma due to his record of negotiating in bad faith.

Some Kind of Mandate

In light of recent poll results, Dan Froomkin asks what kind of mandate the president has and whether it has any relationship with what he's put on his agenda for this term.  (Answers: Not much and even less.)  As I have written, mandates are largely illusory things anyway, but the president's campaign gave him very little basis to claim any kind of one, let alone the issues he is talking about these days.

Here's an exercise you can do at home.  Have a look at the poll results from the Post-ABC survey and also the Pew survey Froomkin links to.  Compare these results with what the president has focused his attention on, such as in the Post interview.  If you are over 21 and your roommate promises to hide the car keys, you can even turn this into a drinking game.

I'll be away from blogging for the next 24-36 hours, which should give you enough time to sober up.  Above all, please don't drink and blog.  (Gee, I wonder if that will be a topic at the Harvard conference?)

Iran All the Way

If you need yet more links to read about the fallout from Seymour Hersh's story about U.S. plans to attack Iran, my friends Pudentilla and the Samuel Taylor Coleridge Foundation have put together an excellent collection.

Now They Know How It Feels

Here are a few quotes from very upset fellow citizens about recent statements the president made:

• "I am sure [White House] phone lines are lighting up all over."
• "It was not articulated that way in the campaign."
• "The president is willing to spend his political capital on [Issue X], but the nation is greatly conflicted on that issue.... The nation is united on [Issue Y]. The president's leadership is desperately needed."

Now for a quiz.  The fellow citizens and Issues X and Y are:

1. Business leaders; overturning Roe v. Wade; improving the education of tomorrow's workforce
2. Economists; making the tax cuts permanent; strengthening the dollar
3. The religious right; Social Security privatization; banning gay marriage.

If you answer #3 then you have your finger on the pulse of social conservatives.  Either that or you read this story in the Washington Post.  And it sure sounds like they are pissed off.  Imagine that -- the president lied about his intentions!

Supermajorities and Social Security

Can't get enough of arcane Senate procedure?  Want to know what else under the sun I could say about supermajorities?  Well, worry not, because I haven't had to say it.  The Decembrist has (via Josh Marshall).

Even if Frist exercises the nuclear option, it would only affect Senate action on nominations, not on ordinary legislation.  This means, of course, that Social Security privatization would be subject to a filibuster, and at this point it seems highly unlikely that the GOP would get the votes for cloture.  An alternative, as Senate junkies know, is for them to push it through as part of budget reconciliation at the end of the session since budget bills and resolutions are immune from the filibuster.

This is where the Byrd rule kicks in, which bars nongermane measures on budget reconciliation which increase the deficit, and specifically bars measures which change Social Security.  Given the clear language of the rule, the GOP appears to have no choice but to find the 60 votes.

Public Opinion on Social Security

Another day, another poll, another reason for both parties to fret about narrow margins.

This time it's a Washington Post-ABC News poll released today.  The full questionnaire with marginals and demographic splits is here (though they do a poor job of noting when some questions are asked only of a subsample).

In general, I don't interpret narrow margins as necessarily indicative of a deeply divided country.  Instead, while there are partisans on both sides, I also see a group of persuadables in the middle of unknown but not insignificant size.  After all, were that not the case, then we would not have seen support for the war in Iraq drop by as much as it has.

As for Social Security, the issue that will be the focus for this post, I see good news and bad news.  First, the bad news.  According to this question, Americans by a wide margin have bought into the bankruptcy rhetoric, and by a slightly narrower margin by still clear majority they say according to this one that they favor being allowed to invest some of their Social Security contributions in stocks or bonds.

Yikes!  Looks like the Bushies are winning the battle.  So what could the good news possibly be?  The Democrats still own the issue.  By a wide margin respondents said they disapprove of the job Bush has done on the issue, and by a somewhat narrower but still clear margin they trust congressional Democrats more than Bush.  Narrowly, they think Bush will not make progress on Social Security, and about as many people say they are hopeful as fearful about his approach to the issue.

As I read it, assuming there are quite a few persuadables out there, Democrats have more credibility on Social Security than the administration does.  That won't last forever in the face of a coordinated media blitz once this starts rolling, but it does mean that Bush's first steps are and will be treated with caution.  As incoherent as congressional Democrats have been on many other issues, this is one place where speaking with one voice will be of great benefit.  Above all, Dems don't have to prove their bona fides the way they had to on security issues.

On more mixed news, respondents believe Social Security should be a high priority but not the highest.  (The poll did not ask them to rank issues directly against one another.  The only ones which a majority said should be the highest priority were Iraq and terrorism.)  What it also showed, however, was that the public shared little interest in the issues Bush has said are part of his second-term "mandate" -- in addition to Social Security, taxes and tort reform.

Finally, we should take with a grain of salt one result which the Post story emphasizes, that the public wants congressional Democrats to compromise with the White House rather than stand up to it.  What the story does not say is that the poll also reveals that few people think reducing partisanship should be the highest priority.  (Interestingly, in the former case there was a predictable difference by the partisanship of the respondent, but in the case of the latter there was virtually no difference by party in terms of how high a priority bipartisanship ought to be.)  In other words, the obvious: Democrats should pick their battles and not believe calls for them to cave on every dispute.  And with a White House that thinks compromise means capitulation, Dems should know by now to step very cautiously indeed when negotiating.

Update:  Looks like Kevin Drum read the essence of it more or less the same way I did.

A Slender Hope

You will recall from my obsessive one-sided debate with Bush's Post interview that he had said he wouldn't push the anti-gay marriage amendment as long as Senate Republicans didn't think it was necessary.  That didn't last long.  Yesterday, hours after the Post story was, er, posted, the White House said Bush would continue to seek a constitutional amendment, either bowing to an irate religious right or anticipating it (take your pick).  As you will read in the Times, that made Rick Santorum pleased as punch.

Less pleased, no doubt, was Andrew Sullivan who had held out slender hope based on the Post comments that Bush had seen the light and repented from his hateful ways.  Alas, as was too easy to predict, that was not the case.  Tom Tomorrow tells the story.

Unfortunate Band Names

AP tells of Kristin Hersh's new band, which took the now-unfortunate name 50 Foot Wave.  In case you were wondering, it has nothing to do with tsunamis and they distributed a promo disc a week before the Indian Ocean disaster.

For unfortunate band names, the only one I can think of worse than that is I Am the World Trade Center.  Yes, they existed before the attack, and decided they weren't going to let Osama decide their name.  For better or worse.

Red Carded

A contract dispute may ruin may favorite sport in this country, at least for the next few years.  No, not that sport, soccer.

If you don't care about sports, or hate soccer because it's something the French are pretty good at, then move on.  If a fan or curious, then continue reading after the jump.

Corrections of the Week

To make up for the last two weekends' worth while I was on vacation, here are several corrections.  First, from the New York Times:

An article in the Lives They Lived issue on Dec. 26 about Mary McGrory, the Washington columnist, referred incorrectly to some guests at her parties. George Stephanopoulos was not at the first one attended by the writer, Maureen Dowd, though he was a guest (and occasional canape server) at some later ones.

Showing their readership is some what different from that of the Times, a correction from the Dallas Morning News:

A Jan. 9 article incorrectly said the Bad Boy Heavy Muscle Truck can climb a 60-degree grade. It can climb a 60 percent grade.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Valley street names — A Jan. 8 Voices article on San Fernando Valley street names said the title of Burt Prelutsky's book is "Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From Heaven." It is "Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco."

And finally, from the BBC, those dam homophones!

CORRECTION: The BBC News website had a homophone in its report on the North of England Education Conference.

The story said: "Straight after Ms Kelly's speech I spoke to a number of teachers' and head teachers' leaders. None was overwhelmed by what they had heard but, equally, none of them was damming either."

GOP Moderates Tone Down the Bluster

As I wrote yesterday in my third of three long posts on the filibuster (shorter Boffo: Don't believe GOP claims that it is unconstitutional), we can expect that some of their moderates will be uncomfortable with the strategy of Frist and company.  Today the Washington Post fills in some of that story.  Here is the quick head count:

In recent interviews and statements, four Republican senators have expressed deep reservations about the "nuclear option." At least two others appear to be leaning against it, although less definitively, and several have refused to state a position publicly.

One read on the outcome:

"At this point, it's too close to call," Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way, which opposes Frist's proposal, said Friday. If pushed to the wall, said Neas, who previously worked for two Senate Republicans, a slim majority of senators probably will rebuff Frist because they want to preserve the Senate's uniqueness and not make it "just like the House." In the House, where filibusters are not allowed, the majority party generally can ride roughshod over the minority.

The senators to make public statements against exercising the nuclear option are Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins from Maine (yea for us!), Lincoln Chafee and John McCain; leaning against are John Warner and Chuck Hagel; and refusing to take a position are Thad Cochran, Ted Stevens and John Sununu.  At the same time, the story also says that Ben Nelson might support the GOP if it is over an appellate rather than Supreme Court nomination, so the Dems might need as many seven GOP votes to stave off the maneuver.

Why the hesitation by these Republicans?  Sure, there are some who support the distinctiveness of the Senate, like McCain and Warner say they do and Robert Byrd has done many times in the past.  The real reason so many -- and specifically so many moderates -- oppose it is because if the party loses its majority then it has lost a valuable tool to put the brakes on the Democratic agenda in the future.  The moderates are the ones who would lose their influence under those conditions, just as the votes of Dems like Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Evan Bayh have heightened power now for cloture votes.  It is this shadow of the future that makes even a few long-serving (but not overly ideological) conservatives like Stevens hesitant to exercise the nuclear option.

Bush's Approach to Bipartisanship

Again, on Social Security from the Washington Post interview:

The Post: So have you talked to Senate Democrats about this?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I have talked to Senate Democrats, and I will continue to talk to Senate Democrats. And I'll continue --

The Post: Did you --

THE PRESIDENT: We had a meeting with -- I think before Christmas we had the leadership in, didn't we?

MS. DEVENISH [Nicolle Devenish, the White House communications director]: That was Republicans.

MR. McCLELLAN: For Social Security?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

MR. McCLELLAN: The bipartisan meeting at the end of last year, toward the end of last year.

THE PRESIDENT: And before we went on the Christmas break?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: It was right after, I think Harry --[Senate Minority Leader] Harry Reid was there, I know for certain. I'm trying to remember -- I can't remember all who were there. But, yes, I have, and will continue to do so, and continue to speak to the people.

The Post: But you haven't reached out personally to [Senate Democrats] Ben Nelson or Mary Landrieu or [Joseph] Lieberman, people that seem open, at least to the idea, because so many Democrats say, no way.

THE PRESIDENT: I will. First step is to make sure people address -- are willing to address the problem.

In other words, he'll start to talk with them once they've come around to his way of thinking.