It’s time for another dispatch from the “nuclear option” clown show — this time it’s Bill Kristol advocating using the Schiavo case as a lever for ramming through Bush’s judicial nominees on party line votes:

[Our families] deserve a judiciary that is respectful of democratic self-government and committed to a genuine constitutionalism. The Bush administration should nominate such judges, and Congress should confirm them. And the president and Congress should lead a serious national debate on the distinction between judicial independence and judicial arrogance, and on the difference between judicial review and judicial supremacy. After all, we are a “maturing society,” as the Supreme Court has told us. Perhaps it is time, in mature reaction to this latest installment of what Hugh Hewitt has called a “robed charade,” to rise up against our robed masters, and choose to govern ourselves. Call it Terri’s revolution.

As the DLC points out, this is nonsensical (and a disturbing turn of events for Kristol, who is widely regarded as one of the smartest conservative pundits in DC):

[I]t’s a truly weird argument. The Florida judges which Kristol urges us to “rise up against” were applying Florida law, enacted by the democratically elected Florida legislature, in the Schiavo case. The key law, which requires judges to make a finding of fact about the wishes and medical conditions of people in Terri Schiavo’s sad situation was sponsored by a leading Republican legislator. This law was amended by a Republican-controlled legislature in 1999 to make it specifically clear that feeding tube decisions are part of the same fact-finding process — an amendment signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush. And when Gov. Bush sought last week to ram through a sloppily drafted bill aimed at exempting Terry Schiavo and an indeterminable number of cases from this law, the Republican-controlled Florida Senate stopped him.

Now, let’s take a look at those “robed masters” in Florida who Kristol says are trampling on democracy in so egregious a manner that Washington must intervene. Unlike federal judges, all Florida state judges serve limited terms of six years, and can be deposed by voters at the end of each term. Moreover, Florida’s Circuit Court judges, its trial judges, must face a non-partisan election every six years with opponents given every opportunity to run against them. Consider Circuit Court judge George Greer, whom Kristol basically accuses of deciding, as an act of judicial arrogance, against saving Terri Schiavo’s life. Greer was re-elected by the voters of his circuit last year by a two-to-one margin, despite drawing an opponent who was strongly supported by those angry at his role in the Schiavo case.

So here’s Kristol’s argument in a nutshell: It is a national imperative that we run roughshod over the traditions of the democratically elected U.S. Senate in order to let George W. Bush make life-time appointments to the federal bench to save us from democratically elected state judges applying the laws of a democratically elected state legislature. Who’s showing a lack of respect for “self-government” and “genuine constitutionalism” here? And who’s really aiming at the wholesale creation of “robed masters?”

(The only problem with this argument is the implicit endorsement of judicial elections, which are a disaster.)