It’s easy to predict that national reporters and editors will hail this deal as a triumph for back-slapping Washington, and easy to predict that moderates, as usual, get credit for “getting things done” and no blame for having great Plastic Man/Stretch Armstrong elasticity in their principles. It’s the same way the media hailed the GHW Bush budget deal raising taxes — and then, the media turned on Bush at election time and let Clinton pound him over breaking his campaign promises. Being a deal-making Senator also did wonderful things for Bob Dole’s presidential hopes, eh?

But I’ll confess I’ve been getting worried about the GOP taking a beating from the liberal media elite if the other “nuclear” course had been taken, as much as the Democrats’ tactics are objectionable. Remember the government shutdowns of the Clinton era, and how thoroughly the media sold the idea that it was Gingrich’s fault, not Clinton’s? See pollingreport.com for an idea of how tilted the poll questions have been to favor the Democrats. (In one poll, a majority of those surveyed agreed a Supreme Court nominee should have to get 60 votes to be confirmed.) If the Democrats had shut down the nation’s business over judges, the media would have presented it predictably as Conservatives Shut Down the Government Again.

For most Americans, this is the definition of an inside-baseball political issue, at least at the circuit court level. Circuit court nominees are almost never covered on TV news, even if they sit for four years like Priscilla Owen. CBS mentioned her once in 2002, and then not again until this month. ABC didn’t mention her until this month.

You know what else is weird? In tracking the New York Times the last couple of weeks on this issue, they often left the NARAL/PFAW/Alliance for Justice types out of their stories, as if the Democrats didn’t have a base of leftist interest groups telling them what to do. Meanwhile, Bill Frist was painted as James Dobson’s sock puppet.