Social Conservatives Say: Frist Will Deliver Nuclear Option Next Week

Conservatives Threaten Backlash if Frist Fails to Deliver Nuclear Option on Time

From The Hill:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s (R-Tenn.) chief of staff has told conservative activist leaders and business-community representatives that Frist will soon trigger the so-called “nuclear option” to end threatened Democratic filibusters of President Bush’s judicial nominees this month.

The chief of staff, Eric Ueland, said the event will take place in “less than a month,” according to several people who attended a closed-door meeting late last week.

But social conservatives are anticipating from conversations with Frist’s staff that the controversial move will take place next week and are predicting a conservative backlash if Senate Republicans delay any longer. A conservative lobbyist came away from a separate conversation with Frist’s staff convinced that the disaffected Republicans will make their move in “a matter of days.”

Socially conservative groups would be important potential allies for Frist should he decide to run for president in 2008.

The leader of a broad coalition of conservative groups fighting to end the Democratic filibuster of judicial nominees, Manuel Miranda, chairman of the National Coalition to End the Judicial Filibuster, said: “We all believe that it will be next week.”

“I believe it’s concrete,” Miranda said. “It must happen next week. It would be considered intolerable to delay any further than next week.” He added, “Were it to be delayed beyond the next week, the Senate GOP should expect tens of thousands of angry phone calls and faxes to tie up their lines.”

Via
Political Wire