Politics occasionally produces peculiar alliances that develop at key moments.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked Attorney General-designate Loretta Lynch’s confirmation vote over an unrelated bill dealing with human trafficking. Then the Senate approved the trafficking bill. What did McConnell do then? He rounded up enough votes to get Lynch confirmed.
His work to end a filibuster that had stopped Lynch’s confirmation apparently has angered the likes of Sen. Ted Cruz and other members of the Senate’s TEA party caucus.
My reaction? Live with it.
This seeming reversal gets to a key element of McConnell’s leadership. He can be a fierce partisan when the opportunity presents itself, but he knows how the Senate is supposed to work and he knows how to deal with the “other side,” namely Democrats, when that opportunity presents itself.
Compromise, therefore, isn’t a bad thing when a failure to compromise gums up the legislative works — as it did while Loretta Lynch waited an interminable length of time to be confirmed as the nation’s next attorney general.
So, now let’s move on to the next congressional crisis.