National Review Editors
"Mike Pompeo is qualified to be secretary of state. There is no doubt about that. He is competent — as director of the CIA, he has managed a complex organization deftly, winning the respect of intelligence professionals otherwise not favorably inclined to President Trump. He is experienced — in an administration with more than its share of neophytes, he has served in Washington, initially as a congressman, since 2011. He is highly credentialed — he graduated top of his class at West Point and went to Harvard Law School, where he edited the Harvard Law Review.
"So the fight over his confirmation isn’t about his abilities, but instead is a raw power play to deny President Trump a top cabinet official. The reasons that Democrats are coming up with to oppose him are transparently weak. New Hampshire senator Jeanne Shaheen, who supported his nomination as CIA director, says she can’t support him for secretary of state because he opposes gay marriage and is pro-life. By this standard, we’ll never have a secretary of state again who doesn’t have the endorsement of NARAL.
"Shaheen is on the foreign-relations committee, which for the first time ever won’t give a secretary of state nominee its blessing. Pompeo will probably get confirmed anyway, but he needs Democratic votes because Steve Bannon and Rand Paul have, in effect, conspired to make the Republican-controlled Senate incapable of governing. " . . .And Rand Paul continues to be the single most destructive Republican senator, embracing a suicidal purity on budgetary matters and insisting that national-security nominees meet his wholly unrealistic standard of U.S. appeasement and withdrawal in foreign affairs. Paul is, naturally, opposed to Pompeo. That the Kentucky senator routinely undermines his own party and Trump’s agenda yet still remains in the good graces of the president is one of the great mysteries of Washington." . . . Emphasis added, TD
"Mike Pompeo is qualified to be secretary of state. There is no doubt about that. He is competent — as director of the CIA, he has managed a complex organization deftly, winning the respect of intelligence professionals otherwise not favorably inclined to President Trump. He is experienced — in an administration with more than its share of neophytes, he has served in Washington, initially as a congressman, since 2011. He is highly credentialed — he graduated top of his class at West Point and went to Harvard Law School, where he edited the Harvard Law Review.
"So the fight over his confirmation isn’t about his abilities, but instead is a raw power play to deny President Trump a top cabinet official. The reasons that Democrats are coming up with to oppose him are transparently weak. New Hampshire senator Jeanne Shaheen, who supported his nomination as CIA director, says she can’t support him for secretary of state because he opposes gay marriage and is pro-life. By this standard, we’ll never have a secretary of state again who doesn’t have the endorsement of NARAL.
"Shaheen is on the foreign-relations committee, which for the first time ever won’t give a secretary of state nominee its blessing. Pompeo will probably get confirmed anyway, but he needs Democratic votes because Steve Bannon and Rand Paul have, in effect, conspired to make the Republican-controlled Senate incapable of governing. " . . .And Rand Paul continues to be the single most destructive Republican senator, embracing a suicidal purity on budgetary matters and insisting that national-security nominees meet his wholly unrealistic standard of U.S. appeasement and withdrawal in foreign affairs. Paul is, naturally, opposed to Pompeo. That the Kentucky senator routinely undermines his own party and Trump’s agenda yet still remains in the good graces of the president is one of the great mysteries of Washington." . . . Emphasis added, TD
No comments:
Post a Comment