by Joseph P. Tartaro | Executive Editor
Politicians, especially on Capitol Hill, are a lot like children squabbling over their sandlot games. Given a chance they’d like to walk away and take their ball with them.
What some people refer to as “gridlock” in Congress is one good example of this childlike behavior. Many of the squabbles over important legislation are another. And confirmation votes—on consent for federal court judicial nominations or a president’s nominees for cabinet posts—are further manifestation of adolescent behavior.
But this year has brought out some of the worst in the children’s behavior as we prepare for the Senate to vote to fill cabinet posts for the transition to the administration of a Republican president-elect who beat the Democrat favorite. And not all of the misbehavior is likely to come from the Left; not all Republican senators were real supporters of Donald Trump and may carry some of their sour grapes into the committee rooms where the advise and consent hearings were slated to begin on Jan. 10.
This year, however, many Democrats in both houses of Congress started the fight by persisting in denying the results of the Nov. 8 election. This was not the first time that the results of the Electoral College vote and the popular vote differed, but it may be the most acrimonious.
When the 115th Congress convened in joint session to confirm the results of the Electoral College vote, many Democrats began a campaign to tarnish the results. It got so bad that the outgoing vice president as the presiding member of Congress fumed at his fellow Democrats and told them to quit their childlike shenanigans. “It’s over,” Joe Biden told the disaffected Democrats, meaning the election.
But the Democrats are not alone in displaying this childlike obstinacy. The Republicans have demonstrated the same kind of behavior in the past, as they did after President Obama was first elected in 2008. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has recently tried to temper the behavior of some in his party by telling them to “Grow up!”
The Members of Congress are not the only childlike actors on Capitol Hill. Many disgruntled voices in the media can be expected to beat the dead horse of the Hillary Clinton defeat for at least the next four years. And some politicians are also unlikely to grow up. A good example is provided by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who in her recent announcement that she would seek reelection made it plain that she would attempt to undermine almost every policy initiative put forward by the incoming Trump administration.
A better measure of how “peaceful” or “seamless” the transition to a new administration will be this year is likely to come tomorrow (Jan. 10), the day after this issue of TGM goes to press, when the Senate Judiciary Committee begins hearings on the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to be Attorney General of the United States.
In an op-ed column in the Jan. 5 edition of USA Today, Chris Cox, director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, called Session’s nomination “…great news for all of us who cherish our right to keep and bear arms. But Sessions is being attacked for his support of the Second Amendment and law enforcement.”
The Judiciary hearings will only be the early rounds in the fight to block Sessions by the Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and his anti-gun Senate allies are already pulling out all the stops to oppose Sessions’ confirmation.
“We know their playbook,” Cox wrote. “They will do all they can to hijack the confirmation process to defeat Sessions because they know he strongly supports our Right to Keep and Bear Arms.”
“Gun owners don’t need to be reminded just how bad things have been under the Obama administration and his Attorneys General—Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch,” Cox continued. “Prosecutions of federal gun crimes have plummeted. Scandals like ‘Fast and Furious’ have plagued the Justice Department. Time and again, law-abiding Americans have been persecuted by an executive branch determined to destroy our rights.
“As a former US Attorney and long serving member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sessions knows that aggressive enforcement of existing law is the answer to violent crime—not restricting the rights of law-abiding gun owners,” Cox said.
There has not been such a pro-gun and law-savvy Attorney General as is likely to be the legacy of Sessions’ as AG under a president who supports the right to keep and bear arms. Sessions’ strong record in support of Second Amendment rights and his focus on prosecuting violent criminals make him the right person to serve as our next attorney general. All Americans should support his nomination. He has won the unanimous support of every national organization representing supporters of the Second Amendment and the firearms industry and he deserves the support of the American people who elected Trump president.
However, he is unlikely to be the only cabinet nominee victimized by the Democrats and their media supporters.
