Posted on 04/23/2015 3:29:43 PM PDT by markomalley
When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) postponed the vote to confirm Loretta Lynch as attorney general in order to break the filibuster of a human trafficking bill, Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) punished him by suggesting that the delay was motivated by racism.
“Loretta Lynch, the first African-American woman nominated to be attorney general, is asked to sit in the back of the bus when it comes to the Senate calendar,” Durbin said on the Senate floor in March. McConnell didn’t flinch during the human trafficking fight, which Republicans ultimately won, but such accusations stung.
In public, Republican senators and aides say that GOP support for Lynch’s confirmation reflects the belief that the Senate has a duty to confirm a president’s cabinet nominees if they have the requisite qualifications. In private, they admit that charges of racism such as the one leveled by Durbin discouraged them from blocking her nomination entirely. As a result, Obama paid no political price for issuing executive orders on immigration that he himself had previously admitted were unconstitutional.
“It appears to be all upside for him personally and for what he wants to accomplish,” Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah) tells National Review while discussing the orders. “There is significant downside to the American people and to our legal system and to our constitutional order.”
To discourage Obama, or future presidents, from issuing such sweeping executive orders, some senators wanted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) to refuse to allow a vote on the floor. That proposal failed due to fear of the political backlash that Democrats would instigate by accusing Republicans of having racist motives.
“People are very nervous about Republicans not being willing to have a vote on the first black woman attorney general,” according to one GOP senator who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Republicans agree that Lynch is qualified for the job — “probably the most qualified nominee that’s come out of this White House,” concedes Senator Richard Burr (R., N.C.), who voted against her confirmation.
Nevertheless, Lynch’s exchanges with Lee (R., Utah) and Ted Cruz (R., Texas) during her confirmation hearings in January put her nomination in peril. Lynch refused to identify any hypothetical limit to Obama’s power to claim that the doctrine of prosecutorial discretion allowed him to stop enforcing certain laws; at one point, she declined to say if a future Republican president could unilaterally lower taxes by refusing to collect revenue beyond a certain tax rate.
“Senator, before I could render a legal opinion on the hypothetical as presented to me, I would want to know the entire scope of the action but also have the time to gather all of the legal precedent, the cases, congressional actions,” Lynch told Cruz.
Lee believes it should be an easy call. “In this particular position, we need to have someone who is willing to acknowledge some kind of limit to the power of the president to basically rewrite federal law,” he says.
The frustration with Lynch built in several wings of the conference. Multiple GOP sources pointed to Senator John McCain as a leading opponent of her nomination, an unexpected development given his support for the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill that conservative activists opposed in the last Congress.
The Arizona Republican had what he concedes was a “passionate” debate with Senator Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) during a conference lunch last month. Hatch — who “is very pro-deference” when it comes to the question of confirming a presidential nominee, according to a GOP Senate aide familiar with his thinking — argued that Republicans should defer to Obama because Lynch has a strong resume. When McCain emphasized repeatedly that Lynch had refused to identify a constitutional limit on the president’s authority, Senator Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) shifted the focus away from Hatch by saying that he would also vote for Lynch.
“I’ve felt very strongly, as you know, that if she was going to support what the president was doing unconstitutionally, then I couldn’t vote for her,” says McCain. “It’s my state that’s [got] a border with Mexico, it’s my state that has these thousands of children who show up, it’s my state that has ranchers who have people go across their borders, and I have been heavily committed to immigration reform.”
When McConnell delayed Lynch’s confirmation vote until the resolution of the human trafficking debate, Republicans got a taste of the racism charges they’d hoped to avoid. Activists targeted the majority leader, in particular, for protests outside his office and over the phone.
“The perception is that her race and sex have an impact,” Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas) told Roll Call. “Would anyone else be treated with a five-week delay, blaming it on a dispute of legislators over legislation?”
In the end, according to one GOP senate aide, Lynch’s “race and sex” did “have an impact” on her nomination, which was confirmed when ten Republicans voted with the chamber’s 44 Democrats and two independents in her favor.
“If she were white, I think it would have been more difficult to find the five votes needed to be confirmed,” the aide says.
Of course, it couldn’t be that she said she would not enforce the Law.
These socalled republicans are worse than. Worthless
McTurtle is a spineless organism of the lowest order. Congratulations, loser.
In the course of their daily savaging of Ted Cruz I doubt the media and the Dems are all that concerned of Ted’s ethnicity or being accused of racism.
Nice to see Reid and Durbin are still in charge. /puke
Would someone please tell me WHY we have a Senate confirmation process for gay/black/Hispanic/female nominees? Just like there is NOTHING 0dumbo could do to get impeached, is there ANY nominee in these categories who WOULDN’T get confirmed?
KY Mitch is the leader of the “cavemen” even when he personally stands firm on occasion with his useless vote.
Well, TX, KY, TN, SC, and MS said so in 2014. And we have Cornball and George P. Bush to prove it.
People in KY see something we don’t as the liberal reporter asked GHWB about what he saw in Dan Quayle in 1988.
The Republican primary voters said emphatically in 2014 except for a congressional district in VA:
“Spines Not Required for Leadership”
KY Mitch, who is really an Alabamian by birth, has done exactly as everyone expected. Nothing, with more to come
It’s too bad Walter Huddleston lost the 1984 general election in KY. He couldn’t have been any worse, and he would have been gone by now too.
Those who voted for confirmation are neither Republican nor Conservative. This means that the Republican of majority is but a chimera, designed to fool those who voted for the Republican majority. Our work is not done. There little can be done about the Liberal Republican who live in the world of liberals, but we still have many Democrat Senators living and continuing enjoying reelection in the midst of Conservative America.
The Republican primary voters are just too uninformed to be really fooled. They don’t even know what happened. Imagine the horror coming of their 2016 presidential choice.
So, in spite of all his bombast, bloviating, and bullsh1t, Cruz didn't put a "hold" on the nomination. That's called, "No Cajones". Disappointing.
Since Obama became president, I cannot think of one thing the GOP has blocked. Maybe there was something little here or now, but I can’t think of it. Maybe the Kentuckians and the Ohioans know.
Obama picked a black woman for this very reason- to carry on Holder’s dirty work. No one will get convicted of anything for Benghazi, IRS, Veterans Issues, Hillary’s destruction of e-mails, etc.
Is anyone surprised that GOP confirmed her with upcoming election year and the DEMS platform non-stop scream of war against women, especially black women for next 2 yrs?
Would they let Cruz put a hold on the nomination? He should have done it if he could, but he fears not being invited on the talk shows, perhaps?
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