Senate Republicans in “Disarray” on Judges

This week Senate Republicans sniped at one another over their recent inability to achieve confirmations on certain judicial nominees. In a column yesterday Robert Novak described Senate Republicans as in “disarray” on judges, and observed that Senator Lindsey Graham had riled up conservatives by his opposition to Fourth Circuit nominee William J. Haynes. According to Novak, Senator Graham recently went so far as to call for new, better-qualified candidates to replace Haynes and other embattled nominees. In an interview earlier this week, Republican Senator John Kyl confirmed that fellow Republican Senators Graham and John McCain were “holding the [Haynes] nomination up,” and doubted whether “they’re going to relent.” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist recently commented that Republican leadership has been under pressure, presumably from the party's right wing base, to move forward on the Haynes nomination, as well as on the stalled Terrence Boyle nomination to the Fourth Circuit. Senator Frist acknowledged that Republican Senators were helping to block both nominations.