The most competent authoritarian politician in the national government doesn't work in the White House. He runs the majority of the United States Senate. He wants what he wants and he gets what he wants and he has degraded the Senate's primary function as a considered institution of democratic government. He has the same relationship to the truth as does the president* he serves. He is utterly free of shame. He is utterly free of patriotism in any recognizable form. Mitch McConnell belongs in some black-and-white video of East Germany from 1962. From NBC News:

The Senate's action on Wednesday was expected to last well into the afternoon because Republicans first voted to change the rules to slash debate time for sub-Cabinet level executive branch nominees and planned to do so a second time for district court judges.

“This systematic obstruction is unfair to our duly elected president and, more importantly, it is disrespectful to the American people who deserve the government they elected,” McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor Wednesday before the first vote. “We cannot set this new precedent that the Senate minorities will systematically keep an administration understaffed down to the least controversial nominees anytime they wish somebody else had won the election.”...

McConnell's move marks the third time in six years that the majority party employed the procedure to overcome minority opposition, allowing an action previously subject to a filibuster, and thus a 60-vote threshold, to pass with a simple 51-vote majority.

And, if we've learned nothing else about this administration*, it's that its hiring practices are impeccable and should proceed unencumbered. Also from NBC News:

For ambassador to the United Arab Emirates — a job so sensitive in the tense Middle East that every previous president gave it to a career diplomat — Trump picked a wealthy real estate developer with no diplomatic experience. The ambassador to Morocco? A well-heeled car dealer. The nominee for Iceland? While well-traveled, he had never been to that Nordic country. For Melania Trump's native country of Slovenia? The founder of an evangelical charity who frequently reposted false far-right social media posts on her Facebook page. None have diplomatic experience, but they share one trait: All were big donors to Trump's presidential inaugural committee, which is now under federal investigation.

The Trump Administration is a pure product of the conservatism that animates the Republican Party. It's time for all those forelock-tugging Never Trumpers to clean up their own house.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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