Loretta Lynch finally approved as AG
Loretta Lynch, by all accounts, is eminently qualified to be the nation’s top law enforcement official.
There’ve been no questions about her qualifications.
But for some reason, not fully realized, her confirmation to become U.S. Attorney General was allowed to languish while Senate Republicans invented reasons to prevent her from going to work.
I suspect, as with much congressional business, it’s all about President Obama.
When Obama announced Lynch would be his replacement for Eric Holder last November, he probably hadn’t anticipated that Senate Republicans would, somehow, attach her confirmation to an unrelated human trafficking bill. Nor would anybody of a sound mind.
Especially since she’d sailed through Senate confirmations for U.S. Attorney twice – and both times by unanimous voice-votes.
She’d cleared the first hurdle back in February when the Senate Judiciary Committee, including three Republicans, sent her nomination to the full Senate, after a 12-8 vote.
It looked like clear-sailing for the nation’s first African-American female Attorney General.
True, a couple of Republicans had expressed their doubts about Lynch.
They questioned her suitability for the job, simply because she appeared to support the president’s use of executive actions on immigration reform.
It’s all about Obama, remember?
It takes buckets-full of strained logic for Republicans to think that Lynch would publicly disagree with her future boss.
I haven’t tried this, but I don’t think it would be helpful for me if, when I learn I’m the lead candidate for a job, I’d rush to a microphone and announce my intentions to be at odds with my prospective employer.
But even though there were a few dissonant Republican voices who claimed they planned to vote against Lynch, her confirmation before the full Senate was considered to be a foregone conclusion.
But then, the nation’s foot-dragger-in-chief, Mitch McConnell, stepped in and he announced that Lynch’s confirmation vote would be tied to the passage of that unrelated human trafficking bill.
That set off a slow-burn by Democrats who believed that Lynch had been placed in the middle of yet another squabble between Republicans and Obama.
Lynch’s name was first sent to the Senate on Nov. 13. Before she was cleared for confirmation last week, her nomination had sat dormant longer than the last six attorney general nominees combined.
You, as they say, do the math.
No wonder Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin took to the floor of the Senate and railed against the lack of an up or down vote on Lynch’s nomination.
Durbin hinted that it had something to do with Lynch’s race. That Republicans were making her “sit in the back of the bus.”
Of course Republicans have good reason to be a bit sensitive about race. I have even heard they’re claiming to be trying some of that “minority outreach,” ’cause it looks good on paper!
John McCain became the loudest Republican voice to chastise Durbin.
“It was offensive and unnecessary, and I think he owes this body, Ms. Lynch, and all Americans an apology,” McCain said.
Durbin didn’t apologize.
Instead, it was McCain, in a fit of uncharacteristic Republican candor, who freely admitted last week, that there was a darker reason why Lynch’s nomination suffered from such a prolonged tabling.
When the Democrat-controlled Senate forcefully pushed through dozens of Obama’s judicial appointments and cabinet nominees in 2013, it stuck in McCain’s craw.
“It’s affected me as chairman of the Armed Services Committee,” he claimed. “I told ’em: ‘You jam them through, it’s going to be a long time before I approve them.'”
That’s not good governance. It’s revenge.
Last Thursday, when 10 Republicans joined every Democrat to confirm Lynch’s nomination, McCain voted no.
Announced presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Rand Paul also voted against the nominee.
The 56-43 vote, meant that one only one senator didn’t even bother to vote.
The other Republican presidential aspirant, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, left the chamber and ignored the final confirmation vote.
He’d given an impassioned speech against Lynch earlier in the day.
But as always for Cruz, it was really all about Obama.
Edward A. Owens is a three time Emmy Award winner and 20 year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net