Newsweek: GOP Must Stand by Trump's Cabinet Picks
Why do Republicans insist on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory? We won the election. We have a mandate. We have slim majorities in Congress, but the American people sent Washington, D.C. a signal to end business as usual.
So what do we see in the swampiest of American political swamps? Republican senators scuttling some of President Donald Trump's cabinet nominees. Excessive supplemental spending packages that have no basis in reality, and no way to pay for them except to ask future generations to pony up. Defense spending that grows and grows without substantive reforms and allows a department that has never passed an audit to perpetuate its profligacy.
And we can anticipate a massive Continuing Resolution that will keep fueling our national debt with structural debts going forward, while continuing the Biden-Harris regime's disastrous policies on the border, energy, inflation, and foreign policy.
Did my Washington colleagues get the message the voters so emphatically sent on November 5? Is it only the Left that understands the electorate is demanding change?
Trump gets it. He has nominated for his cabinet individuals who are committed to changes that put America first. But it isn't the Democratic senators who are undermining those nominees; it is the Republican ones.
Matt Gaetz was an inspired pick for attorney general, but some of the Republican senators simply couldn't let a firebrand do what the American people wanted. They apparently don't want the Department of Justice to be restored to its purpose of seeking unbiased justice. So they killed the Gaetz nomination.
Those same senators are trying to do the same to the Pete Hegseth nomination. Hegseth would eliminate the wokeness that is undermining U.S. military readiness. And, I've got to believe, he would make sure the Pentagon got its fiscal house in order—maybe to the extent that one day the Pentagon will actually pass an audit.
And rest assured, those same recalcitrant Republicans would love to prevent a much-needed makeover of the Federal Bureau of Investigation under Kash Patel, or a more rational approach to American health policy under Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
One of the biggest bummers of seeing the Senate undercut President Trump's nominations, and the America First agenda, is knowing that the Democrats are totally in disarray. The Democrats have always had their own internal discord, but with the help of a complicit, propagandized, Left-friendly media, they could always hide their bickering. Now it's out in the open.
The Left is looking for scapegoats everywhere for its electoral drubbing. "Biden stayed in the race too long." "Biden should have stayed in." "Pelosi has stayed too long." "Harris was never the right candidate." "We were too out of touch." "We didn't address the border." And they continue to fight amongst themselves.
Democrats are even split over the Biden-Biden pardon. House Democrats are trying to throw over the old guard; the Nadlers, Pelosis, etc.
And what's fun is that the Democrats aren't getting the full amount of media protection they normally get. Their dirty laundry is waving on the flagpole.
But instead of making changes that are consistent with the November electoral victory for Republicans, we've got the usual suspects in the Senate willing to blow up the Trump cabinet, pass out-of-control spending packages, and repeat the now routinized promise of "we'll fight next time."
Andy Biggs, a Republican, represents Arizona's Fifth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.