Senate Dem tactics have gone beyond mere obstructionism to just outright sabotage. There is a method to the madness. With a shortage of Dem governors, the 2020 Dem candidates are likely to come out of the Senate. And with a party pushed far to the radical left and billionaire donors like Soros who want more of the same, they're auditioning for the role.
But the bigger picture is that they want to tie down President Trump out of the gate. That means keeping as many of their people in government while sabotaging and undermining his early moves. That's what we've been seeing. Every day that they buy, every week, allows them to create more havoc and manufacture the impression of incompetence.
And in the process, they are wrecking the system they claim to want to protect.
Senate Republicans struck back against the Dem committee boycott by suspending committee rules.
Senate Republicans took an extraordinary step Wednesday to move forward with two of President Donald Trump's top Cabinet nominees after confronting a boycott from Democrats.
Republican lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee -- the panel that oversees the nominations of Steve Mnuchin to be Treasury secretary and Rep. Tom Price to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services -- gathered for the second day in a row with Democrats on the committee refusing to show up.
Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, pointed to the "extraordinary circumstances" surrounding the gathering and allowed the Republicans in the room vote to suspend the rules of the committee.
With the committee rules suspended, the 14 Republicans in the room voted to move the Mnuchin and Price nominations to the full Senate, even without the presence of a single member of the opposite party.
"They on their own accord refused to participate in the exercise," Hatch said about the Democrats on the committee. "They have nobody to blame but themselves."
The chairman also said that he had not yet spoken with the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden, Wednesday morning. "I don't feel a bit sorry for them," Hatch said.
In a statement, Wyden called Wednesday's development "deeply troubling." "Today, for the first time in history, the Senate Finance Committee broke the rules to push through on a partisan basis two nominees," Wyden said.
Except that it was Wyden and the Democrats who broke the rules. Their boycott is an aggressive attempt to shut down proceedings. Suspending the rules was the only possible course. And Wyden knew it. All this is about posturing and sabotage. There's no substance here.