The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Pam Bondi Confirmed as A.G., and Why Did Democrats Vote Against Her?

Posted on | February 5, 2025 | No Comments

Only one Democratic senator — John Fetterman of Pennsylvania — voted to confirm Donald Trump’s choice for Attorney General. Can anyone explain why so many Democrats voted against Pam Bondi, about whom there was no real controversy and whose tenure as Florida’s attorney general was entirely successful? There was no scandal in Bondi’s background, no history of controversial policy positions.

But then you read this part:

Bondi, who served as Florida’s first female Attorney General and was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, has been a Trump supporter since the beginning of her political career.
She served as defense lawyer for Trump in his first impeachment trial and as co-chair of Women for Trump during the 2020 election. Most recently she supported Trump in May at his New York business records trial.

Her “crime,” according to Democrats, is being a supporter of the guy who won the election. That’s it — period, end of sentence. Democrats are constantly telling us that Trump is a threat to democracy, and yet which party is it that doesn’t want to acknowledge the result of the election?

Go back to 2021 and see how many of Joe Biden’s Cabinet appointments sailed through the confirmation process with only token opposition from Republicans. There were 30 Republican votes against Merrick Garland’s nomination as Biden’s attorney general, but there were 18 Republican “yea” votes. Was Garland less controversial than Bondi? Was she more of a partisan ideologue than he? You cannot objectively justify the greater Democratic opposition to GOP nominees, and must therefore conclude that Democrats have not yet lost enough elections to be convinced that the country has turned against them. Last weekend’s circus at the Democratic National Committee meeting is further evidence of this. If Democrats took the 2024 election results seriously, they wouldn’t have been acting the fool that way. They seem to believe that regaining their congressional majorities in the 2026 midterms will be a piece of cake, so they don’t need to make any meaningful changes to their rhetoric or policy agenda, but rather just double-down on “Orange Man Bad.”

Part of the problem, of course, is that the establishment media echo chamber encourages Democrats to think this way. Here is the lead of a New York Times story from Tuesday:

After early signs that some of President Trump’s unconventional cabinet choices could be derailed by Republicans alarmed at their character, disturbing paper trails and lack of expertise, the resistance has collapsed.
One after the other on Tuesday, Republican senators fell into line behind two of the president’s most baggage-laden nominees, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health secretary and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence.
The party-line committee votes to send both nominees to the floor for likely confirmation next week provided the clearest evidence yet that Mr. Trump’s pressure tactics and the threat of a barrage of abuse by his allies against would-be defectors had sapped whatever remained of a G.O.P. impulse to balk. And they suggested a broader impulse among Republicans on Capitol Hill — even the few who have maintained some degree of independence from Mr. Trump — to shrink from confrontation with him and allow him to have his way at the dawn of his second term.

What can you say about such “reporting,” except that it’s a manic fantasy symptomatic of Trump Derangement Syndrome? It involves a complete misreading of what has happened in the Republican Party since 2012. After two consecutive defeats against Obama — the John McCain and Mitt Romney campaigns — GOP primary voters rolled the dice with Trump, gambling that this brash billionaire businessman could do something to change the status quo in Washington. The vast majority of grassroots Republicans have never regretted that gamble, and have accustomed themselves to trusting Trump’s instincts, including those “unconventional cabinet choices.” The kind of weak-kneed apologetic go-along-to-get-along Republican “leaders” who might be stampeded by media criticism — they’re not calling the shots anymore. Those days of “bipartisan consensus” (which always involved Republican surrender) are over, and the New York Times can’t seem to process what this means.

By the way, who’s going to CPAC this year? My friend Mike LaChance from Legal Insurrection just reached out to say he’d be there, and I’ve applied for media credentials. The conference in DC begins in two weeks — Wednesday, February 19 — and I’d like to organize a gathering of readers/commenters if you’re planning to attend.



 

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