The Who? in the title reflects the fact that Elizabeth Warren is more or less unknown outside of Activist Left circles, where she is generally considered to be a secular saint*. Warren would also be the first head of the “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” (CFPB) mandated by Dodd-Frank, except for the minor detail that the last thing we need right now is yet another regulatory agency seemingly designed to put the brakes on economic development. Anyway, the short version of the current brouhaha: Senate Republicans won’t let Warren’s nomination come to a vote; House Republicans have no qualms whatsoever about denying the President the ability to make recess appointments for the rest of the 112th Congress; and Democrats, having conveniently forgotten that they did the exact same thing to President George Bush, are upset and wounded over the entire thing. And, oh yes, progressives are particularly upset and wounded that a Republican** called her a liar to her face when she tried to play I’m-too-important-for-this-hearing:
What makes this particularly entertaining is that the Left really, really wants this specific woman in this specific position, which suggests that the CFPB is going to be more or less a meaningless shell without her. Those remembering the history of the FBI may want to contemplate the perils of giving an unelected bureaucrat too much power – oh, who am I kidding? The Right doesn’t need me to tell them that and the Left is going to scratch their heads over the very question. At any rate, expect this one-sided showdown to contribute to what promises to be a very long, slow burn this summer by Democrats as they increasingly wonder why things aren’t breaking their way…
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*I’m not exactly sure why she’s in such high regard – which doesn’t mean that it’s not real, for given values of ‘real.’ To the point where the Left was certain that she could have saved the Democratic majority in the House in 2010. No, really.
**Rep. Patrick McHenry, NC-10 (until they finish fixing the CDs in North Carolina, at least). Hey, why doesn’t the Online Left go and raise a lot of money for his opponent? – seeing as McHenry’s in a R+17 district, which makes him almost as vulnerable as Rep. Elijah Cummings (the other Congressman in that clip) is. Which is to say… not. We’re all still having a chuckle over here at the way that one simple “You lie!” removed $1.69 million Democratic dollars from the 2010 election as thoroughly as if the money had been taken out to a field and burned. We’d love to see it happen again, and again, and again.