Washington ? Republicans and Democrats injected racial politics into the struggle over President Bush’s judicial nominees and the Senate’s filibuster rules on Thursday, underscoring partisan differences while compromise-minded senators from both parties pursued an elusive agreement.

“The attempt to do away with the filibuster is nothing short of clearing the trees for the confirmation of an unacceptable nominee to the Supreme Court,” said Democratic leader Harry Reid. He accused the president of an attempt to “rewrite the Constitution and reinvent reality” with his demand for a yes-or-no vote on all nominees.

Countered Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, “It’s the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942.” He said Democratic protests over Republican efforts to ensure confirmation votes would be like the Nazi dictator seizing Paris and then saying, “I’m in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city. It’s mine.”

The day of choreographed debate on the floor unfolded as compromise-minded senators negotiated in privately in the office of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and leaders of both parties held dueling staged-for-television events designed to court black voters.

“Why are they afraid to put a black woman on the court?” asked Bishop Harry Jackson, chairman of a group of black pastors, standing next to Majority Leader Bill Frist at a news conference outside the Capitol. Referring to Janice Rogers Brown, a California Supreme Court judge whom Bush has named to the federal appeals court.

Frist, R-Tenn., did not mention Brown’s race in his own remarks. He said Democratic treatment of her nomination was “unnecessary, uncivil. It is injustice. I pledge to you here today that I will do everything in my power to see that it stops.”

He made his comments after members of the Congressional Black Caucus said he had declined to meet with them to discuss the issue. An aide said Frist was speaking on the Senate floor at the time.