Petulant baby Democrat senators messed with the wrong committee chairman yesterday as Orrin Hatch pushed through the confirmations of Steve Mnuchin for Treasury Secretary and Tom Price for the head of Health and Human Services without a single Democrat senator in attendance.
Hatch is legendary for his ability to craft compromise and work across the aisle with Democrats on even the most prickly issue. After Senate Dems refused to show up for a vote on three consecutive meetings of the Senate Finance Committee, Hatch simply changed the committee rules to allow a vote without any Dems in attendance and confirmed both Trump appointees. Both Price and Mnuchin will now move to the Senate floor for confirmation.
This is simply shameful behavior on the part of Senate Democrats. As Hatch stated, if these committee members had lingering questions about either nominee (the complaint is apparently over Price in a now thoroughly debunked claim of insider stock manipulation), they had plenty of time to request more info and discuss their concerns like grown ups.
Instead, like those buffoons in Wisconsin a few years back, they simply refused to show up to do their jobs. Choosing instead to stand in the hallway outside the committee and hold whiny press conferences.
The same day, Jeff Sessions was confirmed for Attorney General. He goes to the floor for a vote as well.
If I'm remembering this correctly, crazy uncle Harry nuked the filibuster for anything short of a Supreme Court appointment some years back. So I'm pretty sure all these guys will get their appointments. It seems only Betsy DeVos is having problems within the Republican party in terms of support.
The Democratic party is going to lose all these fights. And they're not looking good doing it. Like the insane riots at Berkeley yesterday over a gay conservative man's speaking tour, the left may look great to Hollywood, whose directors keep advocating violence and murder towards anyone who disagrees with their politics, but it's not playing well outside those few counties that went blue in the election.
I'm not very good at the prognostication thing, as I'm sure you've noticed, but if this trend continues and if Trump can refrain from self-immolation during his term (fyi Donald -- stop tweeting about punishing protesters, simply shame them for their actions), then there may be even fewer blue counties come 2020.
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