The Confirmation Fights and the War to Fulfill the MAGA Mandate
Republican Senators must know what time it is -- neutralizing Democrat attacks, going on offense against them, and standing unified behind Trump’s nominees
GOP Senators Can Prove They Know What Time It Is By Confirming Trump’s Nominees Stat
Do Republicans know what time it is? This week, with the kick-off of confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees, the new Senate majority will have an opportunity to answer that question.
The GOP can demonstrate it understands the stakes of the confirmation fights by decisively winning them — neutralizing Democrat attacks, going on offense against them, and standing unified behind Trump’s nominees.
Winning the confirmation fights is of transcendent importance. Personnel is policy. The president-elect needs to be able to have loyal and like-minded appointees to fulfill the transformative mandate the American people gave him. If the administration faithfully executes its policies, the benefits will redound to the national interest and the political self-interest of the senators themselves. This is precisely why their Democrat colleagues will seek to nuke any and all nominees they can.
Knowing what time it is means understanding that the attacks lodged against President-elect Trump’s nominees will not actually be about fitness or qualifications but rather about power.
Democrats’ true aim is to personally and politically destroy Trump’s picks — particularly those hostile to the administrative state and ruling-class orthodoxy, and therefore unlikely to play ball with the uniparty — as part of a comprehensive effort to stymie, sabotage, and subvert the GOP; eat into its majorities; and ultimately reseize trifecta control. The confirmation hearings are the first chance to delegitimize and destabilize the incoming administration, grind its first 100 days to a halt, and therefore set it and the party on a path to failure just as it faces a generational realignment opportunity.
I write about the stakes of the hearings, what kind of shenanigans the GOP can expect from the Democrats, and how the nominees and Republican senators ought to respond in a new piece at The Federalist.