Trump’s Nominees: Too Much Even for the Die-Hards

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/opinion/trump-nominees.html

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These are vexing times for Senate Republicans.

While divided government complicates the already dim prospects for legislative progress, the confirmation of presidential appointees should be simpler — especially after the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, greased the process by slashing debate time on most nominees to two hours from 30.

Instead, President Trump has been making senators’ lives ever more difficult in this area, proposing nominees seemingly purpose-built to cause distress. Some of his choices are unqualified; others are so nakedly partisan or ideologically extreme that they unnerve even conservative lawmakers. More than one has driven multiple Republicans to take the hazardous step of publicly disagreeing with their loyalty-obsessed president.

For the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, Mr. Trump has been toying with two contentious possibilities: Stephen Moore, an economics pundit and former Trump campaign adviser with a reputation for being reliably wrong; and Herman Cain, a former pizza executive whose own presidential run in 2012 was crippled by multiple allegations of sexual harassment. Both men have expressed enthusiasm for adopting the gold standard.

Both are also devout Trump fans, and their possible addition to the Fed is regarded as a reflection of the president’s desire to gut its independence.

Mr. Cain’s vulnerabilities have already prompted four Republican senators — Cory Gardner, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski and Kevin Cramer — to announce that they would vote against him if he were nominated. Barring his winning Democratic support, this quartet would be enough to doom his chances.

Republicans are still pondering a challenge to Mr. Moore, who has raised alarms on professional as well as personal grounds (the I.R.S. claims he owes $75,000 in back taxes). He admits knowing next to nothing about monetary policy, and his opinion writing over the years has drawn criticism from economists of diverse views. As Justin Wolfers of the University of Michigan put it, “More than possibly any other economist in modern America, he has a track record of getting the big issues wrong.” Wall Street isn’t crazy about him, either.

Even more unsettling for Republicans has been the president’s spring cleaning at the Department of Homeland Security, spearheaded by his adviser Stephen Miller. Peeved that some of his policies have yet to be realized, like denying welfare benefits to legal immigrants and stripping child migrants of court-ordered protections, Mr. Miller has been targeting officials he considers insufficiently harsh. In recent days, the president has ousted a number of key officials, including Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, whom he had long scorned as “weak” on border security.

To replace Ms. Nielsen, the White House has floated the names of such figures as Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia’s former attorney general, and Kris Kobach, Kansas’ former secretary of state. Both are immigration hard-liners. Mr. Kobach, who oversaw Mr. Trump’s failed voter fraud commission, has a reputation so toxic that multiple Republican senators have rushed to head off his nomination. John Cornyn of Texas, a member of leadership, declared that he could not support Mr. Kobach. Pat Roberts, from Mr. Kobach’s home state, proclaimed him unconfirmable — “Don’t go there,” he advised — and even Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a chronic presidential pleaser, said this would be “a tough one.”

Mr. Cuccinelli has drawn the ire of none other than Mr. McConnell. The majority leader is said to have reminded his troops at a closed-door lunch last week that Mr. Cuccinelli heads the Senate Conservatives Fund, an anti-establishment political action committee that Mr. McConnell sees as having cost his team seats in past elections by championing unpalatable candidates. In 2014, the group backed a Tea Party challenger to Mr. McConnell, a transgression not likely to be forgotten by the leader. Ever. Last Thursday, Mr. McConnell told reporters that he had expressed his “lack of enthusiasm” for Mr. Cuccinelli.

That’s Senate-speak for: No way this guy is getting through my chamber.

More firings are anticipated, even as more Republicans bemoan the chaos. Chuck Grassley, the Senate’s most senior Republican, is trying to prevent the dismissal of the director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, L. Francis Cissna, who is a former Grassley staffer. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Mr. Romney of Utah have voiced concerns that the “growing leadership void” is “seriously troubling.”

Republican lawmakers also express unease about the president’s eagerness to increase his power at the expense of theirs. Critical departments are being steered by advisers like Mr. Miller and by “acting” officials, whose temporary status lets them skip the inconvenient step of being confirmed by Congress. As Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia recently noted, this trend is “problematic because it doesn’t give us as members the oversight that we need to have.”

It’s heartening to see Republicans scrambling to contain some of the president’s more erratic impulses. (An unfavorable election outcome tends to focus the mind.) But they have only themselves to blame. Having let Mr. Trump have his way for so long, they can hardly be surprised that he continues to act as if he is accountable to no one.

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