For months, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has been threatening to unleash the "nuclear option" to end Senate filibusters and force Bush's seven most outrageously ideological judicial activists through the Senate.

But internal GOP polls show the "nuclear option" will create a "nuclear meltdown" for the GOP.

Santorum reads nuke polls, applies the brakes
By Alexander Bolton

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), a leading advocate of the “nuclear option” to end the Democrats’ filibuster of judicial nominees, is privately arguing for a delay in the face of adverse internal party polls.

Details of the polling numbers remain under wraps, but Santorum and other Senate sources concede that, while a majority of Americans oppose the filibuster, the figures show that most also accept the Democratic message that Republicans are trying to destroy the tradition of debate in the Senate.

The Republicans are keeping the “nuclear” poll numbers secret, whereas they have often in the past been keen to release internal survey results that favor the party. David Winston, head of the Winston Group, which conducts Senate GOP polls, did return phone calls seeking comment.

So why are the GOP polls so negative? Because Democrats are fighting back, and the American people are catching on to the fact that the Republican Party is being driven off the cliff by religious zealots and ideological extremists.

Senate and House Democrats have woven the Republican intervention in the Schiavo issue, DeLay’s statement about judges who declined to save her life, and GOP consideration of the nuclear option into a broad message that Republicans are abusing power. John Bolton’s stalled nomination to become U.N. ambassador has also become a distraction.

Amidst all of this ideological struggle, some interesting political struggles are emerging.

One key struggle is among Republicans who want the nomination for President in 2008. Frist, of course, is one of them - and so is Santorum. So even as they are allegedly working together, they are quietly competing for the right-wing GOP "base."

And a new struggle is emerging in Colorado between the leading rightwing advocate of the "nuclear option" - Focus on the Family's James Dobson, who is based in Colorado Springs - and Colorado's freshman Senator Ken Salazar. When Dobson began running ads attacking Salazar, Salazar hit back.

[Salazar] said Wednesday that the religious right is using "un-Christian" tactics in pushing the nuclear option -- and he singled out the ultra-right group Focus on the Family for special attention. "I think what has happened is Focus on the Family has been hijacking Christianity and become an appendage of the Republican Party," Salazar said. "I think it's using Christianity and religion in a very unprincipled way." Focus on the Family spokesman Tom Minnery said he was "flabbergasted" that Salazar would "call our Christianity into question." And then he returned the favor. "Some of the nominees will be filibustered by the Democrats because of their religious views," Minnery said. "As a Catholic, I would think the senator would be especially alarmed about the anti-Catholicism of some of his colleagues."

Kudos to Salazar for challenging Dobson's abuse of Christianity. In fact, this is an important debate that the American people need to hear. Is there a civic group in Colorado that could host an Oxford-style debate between Salazar and Dobson?

On Sunday, Dobson will take the filibuster war into the nation's churches through a "Justice Sunday" TV simulcast that will be beamed into churches around the country. This is prompting progressive ministers to fight back, as Frederick Clarkson details.

Update: Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR), a 42-year-old evangelical Christian, also criticized self-appointed "Christian leaders" for politicizing Christianity.

Update: Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send Priscilla Owen's nomination to the full Senate, and Janice Rogers Brown will follow shortly.