As battle approached, both sides had dug in

WASHINGTON -- The cots were rolled in to Senate conference rooms in preparation for an overnight debate. ''Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," the classic movie featuring Jimmy Stewart's filibustering senator, was cued up for two separate screenings, one for Democrats and one for Republicans. A conservative group planned a vigil in front of the Supreme Court this morning, where they planned to pray for divine intervention to stop filibusters of judges.

The debate, some two years in the making, was shaping up to be a fight for the history books. Senators quoted Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and Henry Clay, and a vote was scheduled for this afternoon that was expected to be the rarest type in Washington: one in which nobody knew the outcome.

Then a group of 14 Democratic and Republican senators announced a deal last night that would allow votes on three of the long-stalled judicial nominations pushed by President Bush, while preserving Democrats' right to filibuster future federal appeals court or Supreme Court nominations ''under extraordinary circumstances."

But for much of the day, as the Senate marched toward a seemingly inevitable clash, the sense of history was palpable.

Senate majority leader Bill Frist, the driving force for the rules change that would prevent filibusters, started the day by accusing Democrats of blocking judicial nominees to a degree that's unprecedented in US history, and said the moment of reckoning was fast approaching.

''The moment draws closer when all 100 senators must decide a basic question of principle whether to restore the precedent of a fair up or down vote for judicial nominees on this floor or to enshrine a new tyranny of the minority into the Senate rules forever," Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said in a speech on the Senate floor.

If last-ditch efforts at compromise failed, Frist promised to set in motion what's been called the nuclear option, a parliamentary maneuver that would strip Democrats of the ability to filibuster, one of the most treasured powers of a minority party in Congress. That would effectively allow Bush's judicial nominees to be approved by 50 votes instead of the 60 needed to break a filibuster in the GOP-controlled Senate. Democrats had vowed to retaliate by using Senate rules to slow nonessential business to a standstill.

Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com.