After the "group of fourteen" hammered out a cease fire in the impending "nuclear" battle between Senate Republicans and Democrats, much discussion was made about which side had gained the upper hand. Although neither side can claim a decisive victory, The Economist opines that the big losers were the Republicans.

Democratic hardliners have lost less than Republican hardliners. In particular, there are three big losers from the peace deal: Bill Frist, the White House and the religious right.

Mr Frist is a much diminished leader. He had argued that he had done everything possible to avert a showdown, only to be frustrated by Democratic intransigence. But a group of mavericks and backbenchers succeeded in cobbling together a peace deal behind his back. He had hoped to present himself as the leader of a united Republican Party against a stonewalling Democratic opposition, an image that would have positioned him as the champion of social conservatives in any future presidential run. But now he is just one of many generals in a disorganised army.

The White House is also deeply frustrated. Mr Bush's political strategy has long depended on using a narrow Republican majority to push through broad changes. This worked well when the Republicans were willing to walk in lockstep behind the president. But the Senate deal is one of a number of indications that lockstep is no longer the height of Republican fashion. Last week, 46 Republican senators defied the threat of a presidential veto to vote in favour of a pork-stuffed highway bill. This week 50 Republicans from the normally pusillanimous House also defied the threat of a presidential veto to vote in favour of a bill to expand federal funding for stem-cell research. Add to this the lagging fortunes of his Social Security reforms even among Republican voters and Mr Bush looks much less formidable.

The religious right has good reason to be apoplectic. For social conservatives the filibuster fight was always a fight about the Supreme Court. Social conservatives calculated that it would be much easier to get one of their own on to the Court if they could deprive the minority of their power to use the filibuster; indeed, they hoped to sneak one or even two Clarence Thomases to the Court by as early as this summer. But the 14 senatorial peacemakers have not only left the Democrats with the filibuster, they have also sent a signal that they might be willing to break ranks with the White House if the fight gets too acrimonious.

I couldn't have said is better myself.