Knowing that if they wanted to avoid the Nuclear Option they had to let Harry Reid get 60 votes for cloture so he can confirm Thomas Edward Perez to be Secretary of Labor, the Republicans gave Reid the minimum. Only six Republicans voted yes (Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, Bob Corker, Mark Kirk, John McCain, and Lisa Murkowski). How is that for outreach to the Latino Community? What’s their problem with Mr. Perez? Oh, wait for it, he worked as Assistant United States Attorney General in the Civil Rights division at the Department of Justice. Yeah, he stuck up for people’s civil rights. Imagine the gall!
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
And I suppose the R’s who didn’t vote for him claimed it was nothing personal Mr. Perez it’s just that we don’t like the Dept of Labor so don’t want anyone heading it up.
Ya know, this dog is smarter
I fail to see what this has to do with outreach to the Latino community. Is that why Perez was nominated? Because he’s Latino? The secretary of labor must serve ALL of the American people so I don’t see this as a racial or ethnic appointment. Any inreference that it is should be an insult to the Latino community.
inference
there are a lot of things you fail to see.
Right, can’t justify your ridiculous comment so you attack me. Very transparent.
Boo was being ironic, referring back to the Gop plan to reach out to Latino voters for their own survival. It has nothing to do with the motives for appointing him, it’s the electoral optics.
I get it and the insinuation is that somehow if you don’t support this nominee because he’s Hispanic you risk offending the Hispanic community. It’s a cynical viewpoint and Hispanics are more sophisticated than that. Immigration is another story.
Yes, of course it’s a cynical viewpoint, but it’s one held by Gops, not the administration, as you seem to think.
the insinuation is that somehow if you don’t support this nominee because he’s Hispanic you risk offending the Hispanic community
We’re talking about the optics for the GOP.
“Somehow” in your sentence means “because of their well-estabished pattern of behavior.”
Yes, whenever the Republicans go after a Hispanic nominee for no good reason, they run the danger of looking like mean racist white guys. Can you guess why this might be?
Knowing that if they wanted to avoid the Nuclear Option they had to let Harry Reid get 60 votes for cloture so he can confirm Thomas Edward Perez to be Secretary of Labor, the Republicans gave Reid the minimum.
Which means it will be business as usual once these 6(I think) nominations are voted on. That’s why I’m not getting excited about Reid’s “deal” earlier this week.
I don’t know — it’s hard to see business as usual now that the threat has worked and there’s been, contrary to Gop prediction, not a flutter of public outrage over the “trashing of a sacred tradition”. Unless Harry makes one of his very special efforts, it’s gonna be really really hard to put this genie back in the bottle.
We’ll see. I hope you’re right but I want more proof besides these few nominations getting approved. I want to see judges confirmed.
Which means it will be business as usual once these 6(I think) nominations are voted on.
Formally, looking at the operations of the body, yes.
But there’s something more important than that. Knowing that if they wanted to avoid the Nuclear Option is a pretty significant change. They now have to toe a line they never ran up against before.
The NLRB appointments will be next, right?
Or is labor going to get the shaft again?