The McCain mutiny,
analyzed by Dr. Sowell,

Is Senator Frist a weak Majority Leader or does he just not have the troops required to get the job done? Senator Frist is a surgeon but he can't transplant backbone to Senate Republicans who don't have any.

Dr. Krauthammer calls it The flinch heard 'round the world

First, the compromise legitimized the principle of the judicial filibuster. Until 2001, not once in more than 200 years had a judicial nominee been denied appointment to the court by Senate filibuster.
. . .
The second sure thing is that the seven Republicans who went against their party are the toast of the Washington establishment.

Today's Day By Day says, "maybe the GOP's trying to build a bridge to the other side", which of course didn't work. I was saying as much last November 4, the Thursday after the elections

Yesterday there was much yabber on Dem blogs about hoping that Pres. Bush would “reach out to the other side of the aisle”. Allow me to point out the obvious: it's all window dressing.

First of all, “the other side of the aisle” lost big. As I said yesterday, Pres. Bush won the national vote by 3,700,000 votes, an absolute majority (the first absolute majority in the past four elections), the Senate's 53:44 Republican, the house is 212:193, and there are 27:21 Republican governors now elected. In other words, Bush won a mandate.

Second: tactically, ”the other side of the aisle” is better served by spending its energy retrenching, reorganizing, and making a token effort not too look too sore, while having the Republicans take the blame for whatever goes wrong, and then coming back and taking credit for whatever goes well.

I rest my case.

The question is, have the republicans learned anything from this latest episode?