But Frist still has reason to fret. His failure to drop the bomb by triggering the nuclear option, may lead social conservatives to support long-standing conservative presidential hopefuls like Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Sen. George Allen of Virginia. "I don't think [Frist] will get much credit for going down fighting, because it looks as if he lost control of it because there were a group of people negotiating a compromise without him," Squire said. "Frist's problem, potentially, is that he comes off looking opportunistic."

It would not be the first time. Frist's presidential ambitions were marred this March over the Terri Schiavo debacle. Breaking with public opinion, in again attempting to appease social conservatives, Frist tried to usurp the judicial branch and force the courts to reinsert the feeding tube into the brain-damaged Florida woman. Adding ammo to his detractors, Frist said via a recorded message in April, at a rally coined "Justice Sunday," that the senators attempting to block President Bush's judicial appointments were "against people of faith." Frist's rhetoric, and his video appearance at the conservative effort to mobilize Christians around the filibuster fight, prompted Democrats to accuse the majority leader of playing the religion card.

It is a card McCain is least likely to play. The Arizona senator may disdain the "theo-cons'" hold on his party, but if he chooses to run as a Republican it is unlikely he will again declare a frontal assault on the religious right. As a candidate in 2000, McCain said during the primary contest that social conservative icons Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were "agents of intolerance." Should McCain make one last run for the White House on the GOP ticket, he will likely attempt to compensate for past rhetoric by emphasizing his stance against abortion, while hoping to win with a coalition of independents and Reagan Republicans.

However the judicial battle plays out, Frist will continue to attempt to portray himself as a faith-based option to a McCain candidacy or that of other GOP centrists like Rudolph Giuliani. The majority leader's strategic recourse is political martyrdom, the candidate who went to the brink for the social conservative cause.

After all the spin has been spun, a McCain-Frist face-off may have more to do with the GOP of 2008 than the politicians themselves. Neither candidate owns a room when he steps on the podium. McCain's gravitas and Frist's genial smile notwithstanding, both men can come off stiff. With no heir apparent to President Bush, should the primary contest come down to Frist and McCain, the race will become nothing short of a fight for the soul of the Republican Party. And though McCain would almost certainly fare far better in the general election than Frist, the GOP establishment would be unlikely to back him.

Though McCain is a fiscal conservative and has come out against abortion, his journeys down the political middle have irked the Republican base. Case in point: when McCain joined Sen. Joe Lieberman in supporting legislation that would have closed the "gun-show loophole" for those wanting to skirt background checks when buying guns.

Yet never has McCain's centrism infuriated his party's base more than his refusal to support the nuclear option. Immediately following the Group of 14 compromise, the Republican base was up in arms. Where McCain will likely try to emphasize an outsize role in shaping the bipartisan accord, he will also bear the outsize brunt of the conservative resentment. "It reaffirmed what the Republican activists think about John McCain: He's a maverick, we can't count on him, he undercuts us," Sabato said. "And again, that's not the profile of a Republican presidential nominee."

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