February 15, 2005, 7:49 a.m.
The Cot Test
If Frist wants the presidency, he should push Bush’s agenda through the Senate.

By Robert Moran

The politics of 2005-6 and the politics of 2008 are about to collide. It is no secret that Tennessee senator Bill Frist wants to be president in 2008 and that many of the Bush folks want the Senate Majority Leader to be president. Frist is a compelling future candidate with a medical background that could give him significant general-election appeal.

But, it is time to call things as they are. The next two years in the Senate are going to be rough. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) is a hardened partisan with only one tool at his disposal, the filibuster. As the saying goes, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Reid appears poised to use his hammer as often as necessary.

If Frist wants to be president, he has to successfully push the Bush agenda through the Senate. If he is going to successfully push the Bush agenda through the Senate, he's going to have to break Democrat filibusters on Supreme Court nominees, private retirement accounts, and future legal reforms. Frist can't go to Iowa and New Hampshire in 2007-8 and win votes by being the guy in charge of the Senate when it ground to a halt. He needs to point to significant 2005-6 Senate victories that he engineered.

Harry Reid has 45 votes at his disposal. (I count Vermont turncoat Jeffords as an adjunct to the Democrat caucus.) But Reid, who is already talking tough on filibustering "privatization," has several members up for reelection in 2006 that may not be easy to keep on the reservation. Sure, he can hold his caucus together on a gentlemanly filibuster, but can he hold them together through an actual filibuster, the grueling 19th-century test of wills with cots in the Senate for sleepy elder statesmen? Will the vulnerable red-state Democrats in his caucus (Bill Nelson, Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad) really want the lasting image of their careers to be vote-blocking, 3 A.M. nonsense-talking, and a grinding standstill?

Enter the Cot Test.

If Bill Frist is going to distinguish himself from his likely 2008 primary contenders (like Virginia senator George Allen), he needs to be Bush's game-breaking quarterback in the Senate. In fact, one could argue that successfully pushing Bush's agenda through the Senate would so identify Frist with the Bush legacy that he could run as Bush's ideological heir. But to do this, Frist will need to exhibit some of that famed Volunteer-state toughness, and this means breaking filibusters the old-school way, with non-stop debate, sleepless nights, and cots in the Senate required.

Senator Frist: No cots, no glory.

— Robert Moran is a vice president at Republican polling firm Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates. He is an NRO contributor.

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