Sorry, Bill Quick has been wrong on pretty much everything since the war started.

Are you betting against Bush again?

Covered my ass with a question mark in the headline, dude.

I don't know. I've always thought the Republicans would chicken out on the "nuclear option," and I've long suspected this was just a bit of political posturing to appease the base. Judges are more important to the base than the actual elected politicians. Politicians LOVE excuses -- "We would have done X had the other side not done Y."

It leaves them in the wonderful position of never having to risk anything, or make any major moves, while still keeping the faithful on their side.

So, I don't know. I'm filing all this in the "Speculation that Reinforces Preconceived Biases" category.

Well, you may be right on the judge business, though our eye has to be on the Supreme Court appointments, without success on which any appeals court composition issues are irrelevant. Obviously that's also a much higher-profile occasion on which to bash Dem obstructionism.

But on SS, I'm certain Bush is playing his usual very long game that opponents -still- haven't figured out. He has not yet begun to fight. Doesn't mean we'll get the result we want, but...

Ace:

I think you are right. The GOP are going to need a trip to the Crawford Ranch for a little come-to-Jesus talk before this is through.

Bush has a spine (balls) of tempered steel, and he isn't about to let this one slide by. I just think he'll put some spine back into these clowns (who are still unaware that they are the party in power and should start acting that way), or they just might find that it's their own wood he'll be choppin' down in Crawford.

F. Lee Levin was afraid of this (author of Men in Black), and he says, echoing Regan, "If not now, when?"

KCTrio

I hope I'm wrong, but this scenario sounds pretty drearily plausible. Bush has been a mensch on the foreign policy front, but he tends to deal with Congress the way liberals deal with dictators--i.e., nicely, in the hopes that will encourage them to cooperate. Like that's going to work. If GWB accepts a couple more justices like Souter and Kennedy in return for a pitifully botched Social Security compromise along the lines of NCLB, I'm going to be very, very disappointed.

On a more cheerful note, Ace, I hope you've checked out Tim Blair today. Apparently the fall of the mighty titan Gannon is still reverberating.

He may be waiting to to see if he can push SS through before he effectively declares war on the recalcitrant Dems.

Then again, he is a politician. He's not a superhero.

Bush's SS idea is DOA without modification because it doesn't solve long-term illiquidity with private accounts - just holds out those accounts as something the next generation will have when SS goes broke and payments stop, are means tested 20 years from now, reduced for all.

And it does not figure out how to address the transition costs. That is 2 trillion, and borrowing it from China and Japan justs foists the IOU onto the same folks the "individual accounts" were intended to benefit - so they can kiss off a good part of those accounts because China & Japan require payment with interest...............

The obvious answer is end the wealthy folks cap, were they get all they make above 90K free of SS taxes - but the arch conservatives started screaming "tax increase!" and the Bushies froze.

DOA, like I said.

The Courts are more interesting. I don't think Bush will cave. While he tries working on the energy bill, which needs a real cleaning out of pork, anyways, and other major legislation besides his SS mess - I can see him just letting the Dems block nominees and they will likely include a blocked Supreme Court nominee or two - refrain from doing the nuclear option - then run the 2006 election on a referanda to the people that the Dems have paralyzed legislation, and crippled the courts, including the SCOTUS - with their obstructionism and ONLY electing Republican House and Senate candidates can end "National Paralysis". If he doesn't pick up 60 Senate seats in 2006, he can always exercise the nuclear option in 2007, restore staffing to the courts to get them working again......and set up the ballastic angry Democrats who would be in complete obstructionist mode after Bush made all his judge appointments.........set them up for the 2008 election.

It's far more important to get good strict constructionist replacements for Rehnquist and hopefully O'Connor and Stewart and hope of hopes - Ginsburg & Souter & Breyer somehow depart......than it is to bleed all his political capital out for a lame SS plan...and have to bend over to appoint 1-3 leaning liberal SCOTUS judges like O'Connor and agree to the Schumer & the Dems ban on any Catholic who is pro-life.

I say let the dems talk it up and come out of this looking like obstructionists. The results will eventually be the same as they would be if there was a rule change, and it drives home the fact that the dems are obstructing and aren't capable of doing much more than slowing things down. Delaying tactics don't count for much when you still lose in the long run, and the best thing of all is the material our side gets from endless hours of babbling lefties. It's pretty predictable who will particiapte in any filibustering and they can barely speak for five minutes without some major foot inserting, let them have their say. Hearing insane rants won't drive true lefties away from the dems, they thrive on it, actually base their whole ideology on it, but there's a good chance it might drive moderates to the republican side.

Timing. The key to Bush/Rove success is timing.

The judicial confrontation is coming. Republican legislators are waiting for the White House to greenlight it. Proof lies in the fact that Bush has renominated all his stalled appointees. He would never have done that without a strategy to get them confirmed.

The overall battle plan may include Social Security, new initiatives in the Middle East, and finally the midterm elections.

Republican strategists consider the first two matters potential losers. However, in the '06 elections, judicial nominations could mobilize massive GOP turnout, to the devastation of incumbent Democrats like Byrd, Kohl, Cantwell, Conrad, the Nelsons, et cetera.

The RNC has already lined up a murderer's row of challengers. It's all about '06. We'll get our confrontation, just when it does the greatest damage to the Democratic Party.

Nice to see you back, Cedarford.

First off, why don't you like personal accounts? Is it because you don't like investments? What if the investments went into relatively stable, liquid assets like T-Bills, Money Market Deposit Accounts or Index Funds (the horror!)?

What personal accounts have that is appealing is that they are real wealth accounts and have an important ingredient of ownership. You can assign them to your progeny, give the money to your favorite charity, split it amongst your best friends or do whatever the hell you want with it. In other words, the accounts are what the real social security was promised to be: an annuity that the recipient owns.

But that was the big lie about SS in the first place. It was always by design a regular old tax fund that Congress could use however it pleased. And it's a F'N PYRAMID SCHEME. Anyone in the private sector that came up with such a pay-as-you-go insurance plan would be sitting in jail right now.

As to your justice observations, I couldn't agree more. I never imagined I would have said this, but you've written something that I agree with. I don't agree on the timing, I think it's going to happen now. Bush will force the nuclear option immediately upon his first chance. This guy is not playing nice. But that's speculation and we could disagree all day on this.

I have a question for you: What would your solution to SS be? And I'll add one caveat: It must not include increasing taxes on the wealthy (you don't get to raise the ceiling). You may eliminate the benefits to the wealthy, that's on the table, as is everything else. But given the one restriction I've placed (for purposes of discussion), what would you propose?

I'll start with my own, just to get the ball moving:

1) Eliminate the benefit for anyone earning more than $200,000 in combined income from private pensions, etc. Now.
2) Implement private accounts, with restrictions like the ones I placed on the investment options above.
3) No private fund managers make a dime from their management of the private funds. They do this because they are already wealthy folks who want to serve. Kind of like giving back to your country. Put whomever you want on the fund manager list, but they must be talented and willing to volunteer. How about Warren Buffet donates his time to the fund management?
4) Allow for an opt-in/opt-out mechanism any time during the life of the private account. In other words, if someone makes it to 40 years of age and says that they've had enough of the private account option, they keep what they've built but can start putting all of their tax into the regular old SS non-trust fund. Reciprocal mechanism also allowed.

That's my start. I don't agree with all of it, but I bet it would draw some libs into the mix.

The table is yours. Negate my ideas, but I would hope you would put some of your own on the table in their stead.

Best regards,

KCTrio

"Nice to see you back, Cedarford"

KCTrio, were you the kind of kid that was always bringing home stray animals? :)

You're ultimately going to end up reading about how it's all the Jews fault so why bother?

The republican senators had best get used to the idea that the democrats aren't going to budge on that filibuster without a substantial shove. Remember that they believe they own the government and that the judges are their only hold on power. Losing the judiciary to them would be like getting kicked out of Spain to the Moors.

President Bush hasn't caved on too many issues since being reminded that the biggest new entitlement program in recent history, at least, got him zero consideration from the democrat leadership. They are going to fight up until they lose enough more seats so that they can't fight any more. With social security reform they are saying "We've got him now!" and the republicans are saying "Yes, they do! Woe is us!" Perhaps in 2006 we could bounce a few rinos too. It just seems like they aren't happy being the majority party.

OKAY, so you said the magic words - Dick Morris. The over-under for how many Dick Morris have come true since the Lewinsky trial is in the high single digits.

And that's counting this last election, which was a no-brainer from the opening remarks of the third debate.

The one guy I would not bet against at this point is W. He's like a Ben Hogan 7 iron, an Emmit Smith 4th quarter run off tackle, or a Rivera change up - it doesn't look like much is happening until you open your eyes and the ball is next to the hole, the chains got moved, or the Yankees win another one. The guy gets misunderestimated A LOT ...

DDG

Bush does this move so often they should name it after him. He lets his adversaries think their position is stronger than his. Their taunts go unanswered. They get entrenched and overconfident. Then he rolls them.

The beauty of the judicial filibuster issue is: the Republican leadership can win it whenever they want to. It's just a rule-change. They have the votes. The hard part is pretending they don't, so Democrats will expend great effort and emotion making fools of themselves - see Byrd, Robert - and then lose anyway.

BrewFan:

It's amazing how one's true inner self comes out in these Blogs and in the comments section. You are deadly accurate in your assessment of my personaliity. I suppose you could call it "a bridge builder of hopeless causes." I'm deeply wired this way. I am a persistent little pest, and this comes out in positive and negative ways.

I suppose it is both my greatest strength and greatest flaw. It's saved me at times, and it's given me many sleepless nights.

But I keep bringing home the stray animal.

Thanks for the cold shower. Just what I needed the night before the next workday.

KCTrio

KCTrio: It's admirable, except this one keeps tearing up all our furniture too...

I agree with Cederford that Bush's SS reform is DOA - not because it's necessarily a bad plan, but because it simply has no chance of overcoming Luddite Democrats and "third rail" Republicans.

The sooner Bush&Co realize this, and move on to the possible, the better.

Confirming Bush's judges is possible, and whole hellova lot more important than attempting to fix a liberal Ponzi scheme.

Filibusters would be a less successful tactic if the majority (whoever it happens to be at the time) held the other side's feet to the fire. I also suspect filibusterers would not be so popular, Americans don't like obstructioninsts generally. So why is the threat of filibuster enough. Cause all those senators are too flipping lazy to actually mount one or defeat one. Hey, we all like to go home at the end of a long day of work.

cedarford,
You may be right that the R's are playing politics by allowing the D's to dig their own graves ad they obstruct judges. This may get the R's a filibuster-proof Senate in '06.

However, the Senate R's also ought to be thinking about who will run for the WH in '08. Sure, if the R's go nuclear now and re-write the rules, the D's are sure to log-jam every other item of business in the Senate (like many Americans don't like the idea of a do-nothing Congress). However, should Frist push this now (or in '07, as you suggest), he'd be one of the few Senators to make a serious run at the Presidency.