Elizabeth Warren won’t get a chance to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but Richard Cordray may. And perhaps that's good news.

Warren, the Harvard Law Professor and champion of consumer interests, may run for the U.S. Senate, seeking the seat Ted Kennedy once occupied and that Republican Scott Brown now does. Although a first-time candidate, she could be formidable. As for Cordray, the former Ohio attorney general, he was the first state official to sue a mortgage servicer over foreclosure fraud. "Progressives think extremely highly of Cordray," says Amy Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio. "He's smart, strategic and excellent on the issues. He stood up for consumers in Ohio and I think he would in this role, too."

But wait – will Cordray ever get to serve? Precisely because he’d make an effective regulator, financial industry lobbyists don’t like him. And Republicans months ago threatened to block any nominee to run the consumer board, regardless of his qualifications, until Obama agrees to reforms that would weaken the agency. That’s a worrisome, even alarming development – and not simply because it could leave consumers more vulnerable to predatory financial practices.

Republican threats to block nominees to the consumer board are of a piece with their opposition to Don Berwick, Obama's first choice to run the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services; to Peter Diamond, whom Obama tapped to sit on the Federal Reserve Board; and most recently to John Bryson, Obama's nominee to take over the Commerce Department. It's nothing short of a power grab by the Republican Party – an effort to achieve, through the confirmation process, what they could not achieve through legislation. And it seems unprecedented, at least in modern times.