Catching Up

I decided to opt out of several posts on the Sunday shows and try to sort of mash all of the appearances together into one - we'll see if it works.

DNC Chairman Howard Dean did make an appearance on "Meet the Press," and aside from a (presumably unintentional) misspeak mixing up Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, Dean discussed how Dems plan to regain majorities ("we need to be everywhere, and we will be"), and probably complicated things for Democratic legislators by opening his mouth about the Social Security debate. He went after Tom DeLay vigorously, saying "I think there's a reasonable chance [he] will end up in jail." There's much more to see of the Dean interview, which you can read in its entirety here.

Senator George Allen (R-VA) was on "This Week" today, and, as Rory at SMT notes, seemed to place some air between his position and the president's on the issue of decreasing limits to federal stem cell research. I haven't blogged much about this yet, but there were a good number of news stories on this issue yesterday and I hope to have something ready within the next day or so. It looks like stem cells are going to take over from the nuclear option as the big issue on the docket.

Speaking of the nuclear option, of course that got plenty of play today on the shows. On "Fox News Sunday," John McCain reported that those senators searching for a compromise to avert the nuclear option will meet again Monday afternoon, and didn't sound completely pessimistic. But, he noted, bringing people together on this hasn't been easy: "We're having difficulty coming up with exact language which would portray that desire. It's tough." McCain hinted that the Monday afternoon meeting might be the last opportunity to reach agreement, while others suggested that discussions might continue right up until the moments prior to a showdown vote sometime on Tuesday.

On "Late Edition," South Carolina's Lindsey Graham said of the efforts to construct a compromise, "We're all grown men and women and we're behaving like we're in the third grade. Yes, it's very doable if people of good faith will come together." This ought to be the mantra the "magic 12" use for the next few days, just keep repeating it over and over again until it sticks.

While McCain said that more than the "magic number" of senators, (12, 6 from each party) are interested in working out a compromise; Kentucky's Mitch McConnell on "Face the Nation" again stated that Frist & Co. have the fifty Republican votes necessary to implement the nuclear option, although that is somewhat unclear.