Inside Politics

GOP hangs together

One of the liberal Republicans who has been wavering on the nomination of John R. Bolton to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said yesterday he will support the nominee.

The decision by Sen. Lincoln Chafee, Rhode Island Republican, gives a huge boost to Mr. Bolton ahead of tomorrow’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote. Mr. Chafee said he decided to support Mr. Bolton because he is President Bush’s choice.

“I won’t deny a lot of the information certainly brings great pause, but I fight the administration on so many issues, this is one of those that I’ve been with them on — to appoint their team,” Mr. Chafee said in an interview with the Associated Press.

Other Republicans yesterday predicted unified Republican support for Mr. Bolton when the committee votes, which would send Mr. Bolton’s nomination to the full Senate on a 10-8 vote.

“I think our team will be together,” said Sen. George Allen of Virginia.

Request narrowed

At the State Department’s urging, Senate Democrats narrowed their request for internal government documents bearing on John R. Bolton’s fitness to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have threatened to force a delay in the panel’s planned vote tomorrow on Mr. Bolton unless they get the information they want. They planned a private strategy session yesterday and were hoping to receive more material from the State Department later in the day, said Norm Kurz, a spokesman for the committee’s senior Democrat, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware.

The movement on the documents could be a sign that the two sides were steering away from a new clash that would further delay the committee’s vote, the Associated Press reports.

Mr. Biden intends to go ahead with the vote, “so long as the other end of that bargain is held up — namely to provide the information, the documents, in a timely way,” Mr. Kurz said.

Not so nonpartisan

“Amid the many attacks onHouse Majority Leader Tom DeLay, some of the loudest come from an organization called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

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