WASHINGTON -- Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, warning that Democrats and Republicans were headed for "mutual assured destruction" over President Bush's judicial nominees, suggested yesterday that senators vote their consciences and not follow the dictates of their parties in deciding whether to outlaw filibusters of court nominations.

Sen. Arlen Specter

Specter, the Judiciary Committee chairman, cast himself in the role of a peacemaker on the same day that his panel -- on a party-line vote -- sent on for full Senate consideration two controversial nominations that had been halted in the last Congress by Democratic filibusters.

"At certain junctures of American history, the fate of our system of government has rested on the ability of members of this body to transcend party loyalty for the national interest," Specter said in a Senate floor speech. "I believe the Senate currently faces such a challenge between party-line voting on filibusters and potential voting on the 'constitutional/nuclear option.' "

The "nuclear option" is the colloquial term that some senators have been using lately to describe a prospective rules change being suggested by Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., that would require federal court nominees to receive an up-or-down confirmation vote by allowing a simple majority vote of 51 senators to cut off debate, thus ending the filibuster delaying tactic.

Some Republicans have taken to calling the majority leader's expected strategy the "constitutional option." Under long-standing Senate rules, 60 votes have been required to end debate. Frist could engineer the rule change as early as next week.

Democrats have vowed to tie up the Senate in procedural knots if Republican approve the rules change over their objections.

Specter yesterday reiterated that he had not decided how he would vote on the nuclear option, but his call for a "conscience" vote -- buttressed by quotations from British statesman Edmund Burke, John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage" and football coach Knute Rockne -- suggested that he might oppose the change and was likely to displease fellow Republicans.

Specter said he has learned in conversations with colleagues that senators on both sides of the aisle are uncomfortable with the hard-line positions of their respective leaderships.

"Many [Democrats] have told me that they do not personally believe it is a good idea to filibuster President Bush's judicial nominees," Specter said. "Likewise, there are many Republicans in this body who question the wisdom of the constitutional or nuclear option."

In suggesting that senators vote their conscience both on filibusters and on the nuclear option, Specter was trying to seem even-handed. But other Republicans are sure to note that if the vote on the nuclear option were considered a "conscience" vote, Specter himself would be free to vote no without being accused of party disloyalty.

Specter's assumption of the Judiciary Committee chairmanship earlier this year was opposed by conservative activists, who were enraged by comments he made after his re-election suggesting that the Senate wouldn't confirm a Supreme Court nominee who opposed the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

In his speech yesterday, Specter referred to the widespread expectation that Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who suffers from thyroid cancer, will retire at the end of the current term, creating a vacancy for Bush to fill.

"If a filibuster would leave an eight-person court, we could expect many 4-4 votes, since the court now often decides cases with 5-4 votes," Specter warned. "A Supreme Court tie vote would render the court dysfunctional -- leaving, in effect, the Circuit Court decision, with many splits among the circuits, so the rule of law would be suspended on many major issues."

The two nominees approved yesterday by the Judiciary Committee on party-line votes of 10-8 were Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, nominated to the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Republicans think Owen and Rogers Brown make a good argument for employing the nuclear option and can be used to paint the Democrats as unreasonable for opposing their nominations.

"We have now the vehicle," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. "We have two qualified women. They have met every test."

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., disagreed: "They deserved to be rejected before. They deserve to be rejected again." Republicans, he said, are "doing this as a prelude to setting up the greatest constitutional crisis that the Senate has faced."

GOP Senate Conference Chairman Rick Santorum, R-Pa., denied reports that he had urged Frist to go slow on the rules change and said he was still behind getting all of Bush's judicial nominees confirmed. "As far as the timing, that's up to the majority leader," he said.

Last month, the Judiciary Committee approved the nomination of William G. Myers III for a seat on the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Myers' nomination had been stopped by a filibuster in the last Congress.

Next week, the committee will take up the nomination of former Alabama Attorney General William Pryor for a seat on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. Pryor, another victim of a filibuster in the last Congress, was named to the court temporarily by Bush during a Senate recess.