How Senate Republicans Can Decisively Clinch Trump’s Nominees

Do Republicans know what time it is? This week, with the kick-off of confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees, the new Senate majority will have an opportunity to answer that question.

The GOP can demonstrate it understands the stakes of the confirmation fights by decisively winning them — neutralizing Democrat attacks, going on offense against them, and standing unified behind Trump’s nominees.

Winning the confirmation fights is of transcendent importance. Personnel is policy. The president-elect needs to be able to have loyal and like-minded appointees to fulfill the transformative mandate the American people gave him. If the administration faithfully executes its policies, the benefits will redound to the national interest and the political self-interest of the senators themselves. This is precisely why their Democrat colleagues will seek to nuke any and all nominees they can.

Knowing what time it is means understanding that the attacks lodged against President-elect Trump’s nominees will not actually be about fitness or qualifications but rather about power. We know this because of all the truly unfit and unqualified nominees Democrats have abided in recent administrations — not to mention President Joe Biden’s lack of fitness and the disqualifying if not criminal conduct of the late and lauded “liberal lion of the Senate,” Ted Kennedy, who ironically presided over many a confirmation hearing.

Questions about who best can manage a bureaucracy or alleged character issues will be used to create a veneer of legitimacy for what is actually political warfare of the highest order. 

Democrats will exploit the nomination hearings to try to sow discord between and among Republicans and the president-elect, force Republicans to burn precious political capital, and, if successful, swap out nominees for those who will not faithfully serve, while sparking a feeding frenzy on personnel and policy. If all else fails, the Senate minority will hope to damage and cow the nominees to the greatest degree possible.

Democrats’ true aim is to personally and politically destroy Trump’s picks — particularly those hostile to the administrative state and ruling-class orthodoxy, and therefore unlikely to play ball with the uniparty — as part of a comprehensive effort to stymie, sabotage, and subvert the GOP; eat into its majorities; and ultimately reseize trifecta control. The confirmation hearings are the first chance to delegitimize and destabilize the incoming administration, grind its first 100 days to a halt, and therefore set it and the party on a path to failure just as it faces a generational realignment opportunity.

Republicans should be ready for Democrats to highlight past policy differences between Trump and his appointees in an attempt to create rifts between them. Democrats will likely dredge up old comments perceived to be critical of Trump and badger and mercilessly attack nominees — including through spewing ad hominem invective — to fluster them, cause them to lash out in anger, or make errant remarks. Democrats have been known to manufacture unfounded narratives from tenuous fact (or fiction) to portray GOP nominees as evil and conniving, stupid and incompetent, or corrupt and unethical. Watch for Democrats to raise stunning new allegations of alleged infidelities, corruption, and scandal — including through reliance on not credible or heavily politically interested sources at best and through rumors or made-up allegations at worst.

Republicans should plan for all these shenanigans and more. From “Borking” to “high-tech lynching” to the “Kavanaugh caper,” all of these tactics and still worse have been normalized and are to be expected.

It will be incumbent upon the appointees to persuasively explain why their skills, experiences, and worldviews have prepared them to execute their offices on behalf of Trump and the American people. They must be prepared to calmly and confidently respond to the most heinous possible assaults, including not only known opposition research but also unknown and unforeseen lines of attack. When necessary, they will have to deconstruct the false premises, innuendo, and strategy behind the narratives being weaved to expose the cynical, scorched-earth political warfare for what it is. Neither they nor Senate Republicans can shrink or show weakness in the face of intimidation.

The senators’ job will be to ask the questions that allow the nominees to best debunk the Democrats’ attacks and to serve as force multipliers and amplifiers in championing the nominees.

They ought to put Democrats on the defensive by making clear that the attacks on the nominees are about thwarting the peaceful transfer of power and obstructing an agenda the American people overwhelmingly supported. They ought to make clear that the nominees represent change agents who will prioritize common sense and realism over ideology and idealism, merit over politics, and ingenuity and vigor over bureaucracy and stagnation. In several circumstances, appointees who have not worked their way up through federal agencies, or who have been targeted by those agencies, are precisely the people needed to shake them up and fix them, and Republican senators must drive this point home.

By fending off left-wing attacks, putting Democrats on the defensive, and confirming Trump’s nominees, Senate Republicans will show they know what time it is. In so doing, they will help set the conservative-populist-nationalist movement on a path to victory over the next four, eight, or even 12 years — for the benefit of all Americans.

Ben Weingarten is editor at large for RealClearInvestigations. He is a senior contributor to The Federalist, columnist at Newsweek, and a contributor to the New York Post and Epoch Times, among other publications. Subscribe to his newsletter at weingarten.substack.com, and follow him on Twitter: @bhweingarten.