Senate needs to move forward with Lynch
Aside from the president himself, no other figure in the Obama administration has generated as much animosity from Republicans over the last six years as Attorney General Eric Holder.
As the Vox website pointed out, Holder, “the man responsible for carrying out some of the Obama policies (Republicans) hate most, is also a personal proxy for the president – not just because they’re black men, but because they’re personal friends.”
Sometimes the hostility has been so vehement, you can’t help but wonder if his opponents spend their evenings sticking pins in Eric Holder voodoo dolls.
That being the case, you would think they would be positively gleeful at the thought of Holder cleaning out his desk at the Justice Department and starting his second career on the lecture and book-signing circuit. After all, it was in late September – almost seven months ago – that Holder announced he was stepping down.
But the nomination of his proposed successor, Loretta Lynch, a U.S. attorney from New York, has been stalled on the runway for weeks. The reason? Senate Republicans are holding up a vote on Lynch until a vote is taken on an unrelated human trafficking bill that has bipartisan support. However, it has stirred the ire of some Democrats who say a provision was slipped into the bill prohibiting any money from a fund being established to help victims from going toward abortions. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said no action will be taken on Lynch’s confirmation until the human trafficking bill gets a vote.
And, even then, there’s no guarantee that Lynch will be confirmed. Even though no skeletons have come rattling out of her closet, most Republicans in the Senate will probably not vote for her simply because she’s an Obama appointee, or because she has said she would stand behind the president’s executive orders on immigration, acts which some Republicans consider to be “czarlike,” in the words of one of them, despite the fact that almost all of Obama’s predecessors over the last 60 years or so have issued similar orders.
The long delay in Lynch’s confirmation confirms one suspicion for many people – the United States’ legislative branch is dysfunctional. If senators want to foster another impression, they’ll settle their differences, quit dilly-dallying and make Lynch attorney general.