According to Steve Clemonss

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According to Steve Clemons’s most recent update, the White House and the senate leadership have basically given up on the prospect of getting John Bolton’s nomination through the United States senate. And it’s worth noting that in itself that is a huge and quite improbable victory for those who started more than three months ago now trying to mobilize opposition to this very unfortunate nomination.

What remains to be seen now is whether President Bush will bypass the senate and install Bolton at the UN by a recess appointment.

For starters, it’s worth saying that that’s the president’s right. Whether it’s fair in the abstract is just as irrelevant as the question is about the filibuster.

But it is also becoming increasingly clear that winning on Bolton is more important to the White House than having someone in that position who would be in any way effective in the job by any measure. He would, I assume, be the first UN Ambassador ever to be seated who quite publicly lacked the confidence of the United States senate. And what does it tell you exactly about President Bush’s foreign policy priorities today — and all the challenges that the country currently faces in Iraq and elsewhere — that he’s putting so much into sustaining this single nomination? There’s nothing else going on in the world that could use the attention and political muscle more than this?

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