Things are not going well for Todd Blanche. A possible vote on his Senate confirmation went awry Wednesday when Chuck Grassley dismissed the committee. It also doesn’t help that after this week the Senate will be out of session for an entire month, despite efforts of some Republican senators to keep the upper chamber in session. And it’s not just John Cornyn and Thom Tillis who are voting “no” on Blanche, today Bill Cassidy chimed in as well. PoliticusUSA:
Todd Blanche’s AG committee vote is tomorrow morning — he still doesn’t have the votes. CORNYN & TILLIS are demanding a written change to Trump’s IRS settlement that led to the weaponization fund. Without that, Tillis tells me he’ll deny quorum & force delay. Rs need every vote.
Remember that 1/6 insurrectionist trust fund that Trump tried to make a reality?
Sen. John Cornyn wants it gone. Cornyn wants it put in writing that the 1/6 slush fund is dead and won’t be coming back.
In case you are thinking that it is just Cornyn and Tillis, here is Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy:
I have to make sure that he is the attorney general who used to be the president’s personal attorney, not the personal attorney who is also the attorney general.
I am concerned about the lawfare, going after people. Cassidy Hutchinson, for example, a grand jury, I’m told is being empaneled, going after her. Why? Tell me that again. Why? The fact that that’s happening has great concern and should concern all Americans. Because where does it stop?
What do Cassidy, Tillis, and Cornyn have in common?
They were all forced out of office by Donald Trump.
All three of these Senators will be gone in January, and before you think that they will cave, remember, they are gone in a few months. There is nothing that Donald Trump can do to them.
The reason why these three Republicans are significant is that with Republicans possibly pulling a Weekend at Bernie’s with Mitch McConnell, if these three vote no on Blanche, they won’t have enough votes to get him confirmed.
However, Blanche has to get out of committee before a final vote happens. Tillis’s threat to deny a quorum to the committee means that a vote might not be held.
This scenario is an embarrassment for Trump, who has never gotten along well with some in the Republican Senate majority, but he nuked the relationship when he went on a revenge tour and cost three popular Senate incumbents their jobs with their colleagues.
A group of Republican senators is angry at what Trump did in the primaries, and they are angry over his obsession with the SAVE America Act.
If Republicans reject Blanche, it will be more than the rejection of a presidential nominee. It will be the rejection of Trump’s personal lawyer.
Todd Blanche could be crashing and burning, and if he does, it will be a total humiliation for Donald Trump.
There you have it in a nutshell. Not since the aborted nomination of Matt Gaetz for attorney general has the GOP had such a clothespin on its collective nose, as key senators refuse to vote for Todd Blanche.
Is the midnight oil burning? Oh most definitely. Trump is probably taking a few hours (or minutes, more realistically) away from his social media feed and attempting to twist arms for Blanche, while he tries to figure out what to do about Iran. He’s dropped a lot of F-bombs there, but it remains to be seen what real firepower gets used in the foreseeable future. Blanche is actually running in third place behind Iran and social media in Trump’s “mind.”
