''It's embarrassing for the Senate majority leader not to be able to
hold things together, given the fact that he has a 10-seat margin,"
said Darrell West, a political science professor at Brown University.

''It doesn't speak very highly to his leadership skills."


From The Boston Globe, 12/22/05:

Party support in Senate erodes around Frist

In setback for Republicans, key bills stall

By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON --

Senate majority leader Bill Frist, heading a 55-to-45 Republican
majority, might have expected to deliver a pile of legislative gifts
this month to the White House, which had hoped to end the year with
$40 billion in budget cuts, approval to drill for oil in an Alaskan
wildlife refuge, and the full extension of the Patriot Act giving
expanded powers to law enforcement.

But Frist, a Tennessee Republican with his eye on the White House,
found his party in a pre-Christmas dogfight yesterday, with GOP
lawmakers joining united Democrats in a series of embarrassing
setbacks for President Bush and the Republican agenda.

The budget-cutting bill went through, but it required Vice President
***** Cheney to cut short an overseas trip to cast the tie-breaking
vote.

Further, Democrats succeeded in challenging a technical point on the
bill that will force the House to vote on it again, delaying its
adoption until at least late January.

Dismissing suggestions that it would be unpatriotic to block a defense
bill, most of the Democrats -- joined by two Republicans -- staged a
filibuster to block $453 billion in defense appropriations because the
measure included authorization to drill for oil in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge.

The defense appropriations bill later passed, stripped of the drilling
authorization.

And last night the Senate voted to extend the Patriot Act by only six
months to allow more negotiations over civil liberties protections.

Earlier, a group of 52 senators, including eight Republicans, had
signed a letter to Frist asking that he allow them to extend the act
for just three months instead of making it permanent.

Republican leaders were also scrambling to get enough votes to approve
another spending bill for the departments of Labor and Health and
Human Services.

GOP moderates and Democrats balked at the package because it cut
popular programs such as food stamps, scientific research, and the No
Child Left Behind education programs.

_____________________________________________________________

"My centre is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent.
I am attacking."

Marshal Ferdinand Foch

Harry