When Sen. Lindsey Graham joined the so-called "Gang of 14" last month in a last-minute effort to sidestep Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's controversial scheme to ban the filibuster of judicial nominees, Sen. Graham's conservative base across South Carolina expressed outrage with his perceptible abandonment of right-wing principles.

Yet as the nation reacts to President Bush's nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, conservatives should question their recent criticism of the judicial compromise as commentators from both sides of the aisle are beginning to wonder just what, if anything, the Democrats were able to gain in the deal that Sen. Graham helped to broker.

Quite simply, the self-proclaimed "moderate Republicans" who helped to form the "Gang of 14" have substantially weakened the Democratic Party's position on John Roberts' upcoming nomination battle and on all of President Bush's future nominations to the federal bench. Sen. Graham, rather than being chastised by South Carolina conservatives, ought to be praised for what should be considered a significant tactical victory in the fight to confirm conservative judicial nominees.

In the short term, the judicial compromise not only forced the Democrats to swallow the bitter pill of confirming three of the president's most controversial conservative nominees, but in the long term, Democrats were forced to relinquish their right to filibuster nominees "except under extraordinary circumstances."

Now that President Bush has chosen to nominate a reliably conservative jurist, who many believe to fit the philosophical mold of his former mentor, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the Democratic members of the "Gang of 14" must choose between supporting the president's highly qualified, yet exceedingly conservative nominee, or stretching the parameters of their previous accord to include a reliably conservative ideology as an "extraordinary circumstance" warranting a judicial filibuster.

At least initially, Mr. Roberts may appear to be coasting toward confirmation to the high court when the Senate reconvenes in the fall. However, high drama is already commencing on Capitol Hill over internal White House memoranda authored by Mr. Roberts during his tenure in the White House Counsel's Office. With some Democrats already proclaiming that Mr. Roberts may be outside the "conservative mainstream," the obstacles to Mr. Roberts' confirmation appear to be growing exponentially, and it is becoming even more evident that the "Gang of 14" has forced Senate Democrats into a precarious and politically vulnerable situation.

Regardless of which road the Democrats choose to take, political defeat is imminent. By supporting the conservative nominee, Senate Democrats will have forsaken their expressed goal of preventing strict conservative, and possibly anti-Roe justices, from being named to the court and will have unequivocally accepted their diminished role as the minority party.

On the other hand, Democrats have the option of filibustering the president's nominee under the guise of "extraordinary circumstances." Indeed, most political spectators and even some Senate Democrats have labeled Mr. Roberts as an unlikely candidate for filibuster. However, the possible invocation of the "extraordinary circumstances" clause, which many conservatives see as the political equivalent to whipped cream -- sweet but without substance -- remains a possibility.

Even assuming Senate Democrats choose to obstruct the nomination of Mr. Roberts, the "extraordinary circumstances" clause may not be politically feasible. Sen. Graham himself has embraced this view: "Ideological attacks are not an 'extraordinary circumstance.' To me, it would have to be a character problem, an ethics problem, some allegation about the qualifications of the person, not an ideological bent."

Additionally, invocation of the extraordinary circumstances clause will create a national forum for savvy Senate Republicans, like Sen. Graham, to attack the minority party for conducting "obstructionist" tactics in bad faith. Democrats must tread a dangerously thin line if they hope to avoid the fate of former Minority Leader Tom Daschle who was defeated by Jim Thune in the contentious South Dakota Senate race that ultimately boiled down to Daschle's support of judicial filibusters.

For Republicans, victory is within reach one way or another. A Democratic filibuster seems unlikely to garner full Democratic support, and Sen. Frist, of course, would continue to reserve the right to invoke the "nuclear option." However, unlike a month ago, public support likely will have increased because it will appear that Democrats have abandoned the spirit of their earlier compromise. In short, Republicans will be able to confirm Mr. Roberts, and probably by a fairly comfortable margin.