Here’s how Cabinet nominations work for presidents both Republican or Democrat: The party that doesn’t control the White House scuffs up the nominee, berates him or her for this perceived slight or that perceived misstep, then votes for their approval to the post.
Consider this list of nominees for Secretary of State and the vote by the Senate over recent years:
- Alexander Haig: 93-0
- George P. Schultz — 97-0
- James P. Baker: 99-0
- Madeleine K. Albright: 99-0
- Condoleezza Rice: 85-13
- Hillary Clinton: 94-2
- John Kerry: 94-2
Colin Powell and Warren Christopher were such shoo-ins there was only a voice vote.
But President Trump’s nominee for the post — the fully-qualified Rex Tillerson — squeaked through with a 56-43 vote, with just three Democrats voting for him. And now, Democrats are threatening to derail Trump’s latest nominee for Secretary of State, the (again) fully-qualified CIA Director Mike Pompeo (who, for the record, graduated top of his class at West Point and Harvard University).
Every Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has indicated they will vote against Pompeo’s nomination. While only the floor vote rally matters, from early whip counts the vote appears to be once again breaking down along party lines. The Left’s opposition to Pompeo sets a new (terrible) precedent on partisanship.
But historically, the thinking has always been this: The president rightly won the election and (rightly) gets to install his team. Members of the Senate have nearly always followed that unwritten rule — until Trump.
“This is mostly about Trump, if not all about Trump, right?” CNN host John King said Monday on “Inside Politics.”
“It is,” said Manu Raju, the network’s senior congressional correspondent at CNN. “A Democratic member who’s not from a red state and who’s not up for re-election, you’re listening very closely to what your base is saying, and they want to resist. They want to fight Trump at all costs.
“It doesn’t matter if there’s someone, Mike Pompeo — both sides agree he’s qualified for this position even if they disagree with the ideological point of view — but very clearly, most of the Senate Democratic Caucus is a very progressive caucus, a very liberal caucus that wants to fight Trump tooth and nail,” Raju said.
Liberal news organizations across the country have come out in support of Pompeo (if for no other reason than the aforementioned, that the fairly-elected president gets to pick his team). In a USA Today story headlined, “Confirm Mike Pompeo to fill the void at State,” the left-leaning paper said, “Unless a nominee has clear ethical or competency failings, presidents should be accorded wide latitude to select top aides whom they trust and agree with. Pompeo passes that test and merits approval.”
The very liberal New York Daily News, in a story headlined “Confirm Mike Pompeo: President Trump needs a secretary of state,” wrote, “In hearings, Pompeo committed to rebuilding a State Department where experienced staff fled in droves and morale hit rock bottom during the feckless leadership of Tillerson. Pompeo also has solid knowledge of the world, the discipline to oversee complex diplomacy and — a double-edged sword, we admit — the trust of a President who seems to believe in almost no one.”
The Chicago Tribune, in a piece headlined “Why the U.S. Senate should confirm Mike Pompeo,” said, “Presidents are entitled to choose their own advisers, and nothing that has emerged about Pompeo is disqualifying. The State Department could use a secretary equipped for the job of advancing U.S. interests in concert with the president — and the sooner the better.”
On Monday morning, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders summed up the situation perfectly when she urged Democrats who support Pompeo to step forward, saying, “Look, at some point, Democrats have to decide whether they love this country more than they hate this president, and they have to decide whether they want to put the safety and the security and the diplomacy of our country ahead of their own political games, and we’re very hopeful that they will.”
And there’s the real problem Democrats have right now: Their hatred for Trump runs so deep they don’t care how their actions affect the United States at home or abroad.
It’s a problem that will surely haunt them in coming elections.