Via NBC’s “First Read“:

[T]he Des Moines Register [NO LINK] reports that a group of influential Iowa Republicans and conservatives are warning potential GOP presidential candidates “that any GOP senator with presidential aspirations who doesn’t support ending judicial filibusters will face consequences in the 2008 caucuses.” In case you’re thinking McCain might just skip Iowa again, conservatives in New Hampshire are issuing the same warning.


I visited the Des Moines Register site, and found the article. Cross-posted at DailyKos. More below:

From today’s Des Moines Register, “GOP leaders tie filibuster to caucuses”:

A powerful group of leading state Republicans and social conservatives sent a letter last week to “potential presidential candidates” telling them, in effect, that any GOP senator with presidential aspirations who doesn’t support ending judicial filibusters will face consequences in the 2008 caucuses.


The letter puts Senators John McCain of Arizona and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska on notice.


The document was signed by Steve Scheffler, director of the Christian Coalition of Iowa; Chuck Hurley, president of the Iowa Family Policy Center; Edward D. Failor Sr., president of Iowans for Tax Relief; and Maxine K. Sieleman, host of KWKY radio’s “Update Today” program, which is popular with religious conservatives.


Also signing the letter were Marlys Popma, a respected former executive director of the Iowa GOP; David M. Stanley, chairman of the Tax Education Foundation; and Kim Lehman, executive director of the Iowa Right to Life Committee.


“The group thanked Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and Senators George Allen of Virginia, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania ‘for their courage’ on the issue,” writes columnist David Yepsen.

The letter continues:

“On the other hand, we are concerned about the two potential candidates, Senator McCain, and from our neighboring state of Nebraska, Senator Hagel – who have so far refused to support an up or down vote,” the group said. It said a filibuster against judicial nominees “is totally unacceptable . . . if individual senators oppose specific judicial nominees, then they should vote against them – not block an up-or-down vote.”


The group thanked GOP senators willing to do that but said “it is important that Senators Hagel and McCain understand that our organizations will continue to keep our statewide memberships fully informed and educated on how each of the potential presidential candidates in the Senate stood on this important issue. Now is not the time to stand by silently while a band of partisan extremists abuse the Senate rules and twist Senate history in order to obstruct President Bush’s qualified nominees.”


The Des Moines Register columnist weighs in:

McCain and Hagel have been among those looking for – and open to – a compromise solution to avoid a bitter Senate fight over the issue. While that position may be the statesman-like thing for a senator to do, it could come at a high political cost if activists like these in Iowa and other states wind up opposing, and perhaps even torpedoing, their presidential candidacies as a result.

[……………..]


We don’t have political bosses in Iowa, but in the GOP the signers of this letter come close. Their decision to take a hard-line stance on this could deny their party the sort of centrist nominee who might fare well in a general election. But, then, centrism seems out these days in campaigns, replaced by the politics of “firing up the base” of your most zealous followers.


At a minimum, the signers and their organizations could make life quite miserable in Iowa for a Republican presidential candidate unwilling to back Bush on the filibuster question.


I have one question: Is there any doubt that the GOP powers-that-be are playing for keeps?

By that, I’m asking: Is there any doubt that they do not foresee that — down the road, in the future — they’ll need the filibuster themselves because they plan on locking up the Senate for decades to come?

Dare we hold out hope that the tide will turn? Or is the GOP’s game plan so in place that we’re just kidding ourselves?

Note: These are questions to stimulate discussion, not to reflect a fatalism on my part. I’ll never give up!

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P.S. On an equally ominous note, “DNC chair Howard Dean told Tim Russert yesterday that he doesn’t trust Republicans to apply an elimination of the filibuster, if there is one, only to judicial nominees.” (First Read)

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