Senate Democrats have turned the confirmation process into an exercise in sabotage.

Weekly Standard

On Thursday—at last—the Senate confirmed attorney Kenneth Marcus as head of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. His confirmation took 220 days. The vote fell along party lines, with 50 Republicans in favor and 44 Democrats opposed. Marcus had held an earlier iteration of the same position during the George W. Bush administration, and he served for a time as the staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He was, if anything, overqualified for the job. But Marcus’s qualifications were never really the Democrats’ problem with him.

Their chief complaint against Marcus, advanced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), was that he wouldn’t defend all students, particularly students with disabilities and LGBTQ students. Booker’s evidence for this claim? When asked in a confirmation hearing by Sen. Chris Murphy to state any disagreements he had with President Donald Trump on specific civil rights-related policies, Marcus declined to offer specific examples. He’d weigh the evidence equally on a case-by-case basis in the occurrences that come before him, Marcus answered. That wasn’t enough for Booker, who evidently expects nominees to denounce the president who’s appointed them.

Other left-wing groups opposed Marcus’s nomination on the undeniable grounds that he supports the state of Israel. In the past he’s worked to weaken the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which targets the state of Israel for supposed human rights abuses (while ignoring the flagrant abuses of Israel’s enemies in the Middle East). The BDS movement is closely associated with the rise in anti-Semitism on college campuses. We’re left to conclude that, for Democrats, support for democratic and humane governments allied with the United States precludes work in government. If that view were to prevail, most American Jews wouldn’t be able to serve in government, which is precisely what some of the most extreme elements in the BDS movement want.

In April, we commented on the sheer acrimony that has come to dominate the confirmation process, especially when it involves the Department of Education. At the time there were five nominees Democrats were blocking: Carlos G. Muñiz to be general counsel, Mick Zais to be deputy secretary, Frank Brogan to be assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, and Marcus. With Marcus’s confirmation, the only nominee not to receive final confirmation is Brogan, a man with vast experience and major accomplishments in Florida public education. In 1985 Brogan risked his life to stop a student from shooting a police officer, thus saving the officer and the boy, but in 2018 he’s a tool in the hands of Senate Democrats who want to disgrace Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

It’s a cynical strategy to block nominations to a cabinet agency for no good reason and then complain that the agency is performing badly. Senate Democrats have now fully weaponized the confirmation process. Their behavior is both dishonest and malign.

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good

one down, many more to go

I hope they pound the democrats