Filibusted

It seems clear from recent comments by Frist and Rove that the Repugs will push this fight to whatever bitter end may be in store. I suspect they sense the Democrats don't want to proceed with a Senate shut down. Reid and Durbin have indicated it wouldn't be a shut down per se, but that they would force Democratic proposals on health care education and veterans' benefits. From today's Times

At the same time, Democrats, fearing a backlash, suddenly abandoned talk of using the chamber's arcane rules to bring the Senate to a standstill in the fight over judges. Instead, they said they intended to call up their measures on health care, education and veterans' benefits with the hope of making Republicans take what could be politically awkward votes.

"What we are going to attempt to do is move to items that we think are of real importance to the nation," said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat. He said Democrats had in recent weeks placed 13 measures on the Senate calendar and would not follow the tradition of allowing the majority simply to proceed to legislation of its choice but would force Republicans to reject the Democratic-sponsored measures.

Republican officials dismissed the Democrats' change in tone as window dressing and said the result of their planned actions would still effectively bring the Senate to a halt.

"A shutdown by any other name is still a shutdown," said Bob Stevenson, spokesman for Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader. "The American people expect senators to do their job, not drag their feet. We don't need a new agenda; we need to move on the one already before us."

However, as you can see from Stevenson's comments, these actions would probably limit Senate business in that Republican proposals would be stalled for some amount of time.

Still, I think Frist & Co. think they might be able to turn up the pressure enough (and "fear of a backlash" - an entirely D.C. media created idea) that the Dems will simply be stuck with a rule change in a few weeks, will attempt their stalling but quickly abandon it and then we'll all move on with Bush's radical judges in place. A rather grim scenario, but probably the most likely at this point.* Reid's success will be in having forced the Republicans to whither quite a bit of political damage in the process. The question is: Is there enough time for the GOP to patch themselves up before '06?

...*The other scenario would be if one or two more Senate Republicans magically came to their senses (as happened with the Bolton nomination) and indicated that they would not support a rule change.