Given our love affair with Hans A. Von Spakovsky, I can't let his op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal go unnoted. Titled "Anatomy of a Beltway Smear Campaign," it is his embittered reaction to being forced, finally, to withdraw his nomination to the FEC last week:

During the past two years, while my nomination to the Federal Election Commission was pending - and before I withdrew last week - friends would call whenever the latest newspaper story or blog post attacking me was planted by political operatives and left-wing advocacy organizations.

They always asked the same question: Why was I putting up with the character assassination that has become the norm in Senate confirmation battles whenever a conservative is nominated for public office? ...

My own hard feelings will pass. But the political system has been damaged once more by the poisonous tactics of the left, and there is no reason to think that the whole sorry spectacle will not be repeated again and again and again. So long as such tactics are accepted and even encouraged by politicians and the media, it will become harder and harder to find ordinary citizens willing to submit to the character assassination that now passes for our confirmation process.

It was a little disappointing not to see TPM mentioned by name, but I couldn't help but think Hans was giving us a nod when he complained about being called a "vote suppressor."

After a five-month standoff, Hans von Spakovsky has withdrawn his name as a nominee to the FEC. The move likely clears the way for the deadlock over the FEC to be resolved.

You can read his resignation here.

"It is with regret that I write to request that you withdraw my nomination," Spakovsky wrote in a letter to the President today. In his letter, Spakovsky explains that Democrats' opposition to his nomination has caused a battle that has been "extremely hard on my family and quite frankly, we do not have the financial resources to continue to wait until this matter is resolved."

Democrats have opposed Spakovsky's nomination ever since last year, but it was the opposition of Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Russ Feingold (D-WI), who refused to allow any vote on the nominees together, that ultimately led to his withdrawal. Republicans, on the other hand, refused to allow Spakovsky to be voted on separately.

To remind you of some of the lowlights of Spakovsky's career at the Justice Department: his attempt to disenfranchise thousands of voters in Arizona singlehandedly (and then his false testimony to Congress about that), his petty attempts to retaliate against Department employees who did not agree with his legal philosophy (and his contested testimony about that), and his advisory letters that led to restrictive voter roll policies in a number of states.

Update: Rick Hasen on where things go from here.

Later Update: Reid's response:

Read more »

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) responded to President Bush's uncompromising compromise from last week today with the obvious response. From Roll Call (sub. req.):

Senate Democrats have made their next move in the ongoing stalemate involving Federal Election Commission nominees, asking President Bush on Monday to either drop former Justice Department lawyer Hans von Spakovsky or begin persuading Senate Republicans to go along with individual votes to fill the five agency vacancies.

"Despite your commitment that you would accept and agree to individual votes on each of the pending nominations, including Mr. von Spakovsky's, Republican Senate leaders indicated last week that they intend to continue to block such votes," Reid wrote in a letter on Monday to White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. "This continued obstructionism will prevent the FEC from its important work during this election season, including issuing advisory opinions, rulemakings, enforcement actions and certification of public financing."

As Reid notes, White House officials had whispered last week that Republicans would finally allow a vote on Spakovsky, but Senate Republicans quickly put the kibosh on that notion -- thus eliminating the only aspect of Bush's proposal that gave any ground. And so it goes.

Well, that was quick.

As I noted yesterday, the White House offered a "compromise" to the FEC deadlock -- except that they refused to withdraw the centerpiece of the conflict, Hans von Spakovsky. Oh, and the offer also included replacing the sitting Republican commissioner David Mason, who's been creating trouble for the McCain campaign. The only aspect of the offer that could be characterized as a compromise was the promise from White House officials that Senate Republicans would now agree to have a vote on Spakovsky separately from the other uncontroversial FEC nominees.

But now Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says they won't. It's either a vote on all the nominees together or nothing. So... no progress has been made. The FEC will remain shut down.

Nobody does compromise quite like the Bush administration.

If you're a regular reader of TPM, you're familiar with Hans von Spakovsky and in particular, Spakovsky's remarkable track record at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. It is because of that record -- one of ignoring, marginalizing, and intimidating career lawyers in order to institute restrictive voting laws all over the country, a pattern amounting to "institutional sabotage" as one former career attorney there put it -- that Senate Democrats (Barack Obama and Russ Feingold in particular) opposed his nomination to the Federal Election Commission.

Spakovsky was one of four nominees -- two Dems and two GOPers -- to the commission. The other three were uncontroversial. Senate Republicans insisted that all nominees be voted on together, and the Democrats objected: Spakovsky would have to get his own vote. The Republicans refused, and there things have stood for more than four months. Without the necessary number of commissioners, the FEC has essentially shut down.

It is a problem that has a relatively simple solution: if the White House were to submit another nominee, that nominee would more than likely be quickly confirmed without much trouble.

Instead, the Bush administration proposed something different yesterday.

Spakovsky remains a nominee. Instead, the administration has submitted a new nominee to replace the current chairman, David Mason. Mason is one of the only two seated commissioners, and it just so happens that he's been creating a whole lot of trouble for John McCain lately.

In February, the McCain campaign notified the FEC that it was withdrawing from the public financing system for the primary. Although McCain had once opted in, his campaign said that it had never received public funds and so could opt out. The move meant that McCain would not be bound by the $54 million spending limit for the system.

But Mason balked. McCain couldn't just opt out -- the FEC had to approve his request before he could. And Mason also indicated that a tricky bank loan might mean that McCain had locked himself in to the system. That would be disastrous for the campaign, since the Dem nominee would have a tremendous spending advantage through August. So McCain's campaign has continued to spend away, far surpassing the limit already. The Democratic Party has filed a complaint with the FEC and has also taken the matter to court.

And now Mason is getting the boot.

So where's the compromise, exactly? A White House spokeswoman tells The New York Times that Republicans are now willing to have a separate vote for Spakovsky. Whether that actually is the case, we shall see. If so, that means Democrats will have the chance to actually vote down Spakovsky once and for all.

But there is no shortage of cynicism about the White House's move. As Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21 put it: "The only apparent reason for President Bush to drop Commissioner David Mason at this stage, an FEC candidate he had twice proposed for the Commission, is to prevent him from casting an adverse vote against Senator McCain on important enforcement questions pending at the Commission. The questions deal with Senator McCain's request to withdraw from the presidential primary public financing system and the consequences of a loan the McCain campaign took out and the collateral provided for the loan."