Gaetz Crashing in the Senate?

<![CDATA[Baseball players, if they're fortunate enough to play 20 years in the Big Leagues, are first-ballot Hall of Famers if they can put the ball in play and reach base safely 3 times out of 10. They're considered among the greatest of all time if they get close to averaging three-and-a-half times out of 10. Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees put up all-world numbers in a season for the ages this past year. Shohei Ohtani, after commiting treason against the Los Angeles Angels to join the Dodgers in the National League, became the first member of the 50-50 club - hitting over 50 home runs and stealing 50 bases. Yet they both were essentially non-factors in the World Series. Throwing a spoke happens to the best of them sometimes. Donald Trump has announced nominations for 12 key positions thus far in his forthcoming administration - Chief of Staff (Susie Wiles), Ambassador to Israel (Mike Huckabee), National Security Advisor (Michael Waltz), Secretary of State (Marco Rubio), Department of Defense (Pete Hegseth), Homeland Security (Kristi Noem), CIA (John Ratcliffe), Efficiency Czars (Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy), Direction of National Intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard), United Nations Ambassador (Elise Stefanik), and now Attorney General (Matt Gaetz). Looking at my scorecard, out of these 12 at-bats, 8 balls have left the yard. I award twin 2-run dingers for Musk and Ramaswamy, and a couple of grand slams for Rubio and Waltz. I think the Hegseth pick is a double off the wall that might end up being legged out into a triple. The Noem pick is a sacrifice fly. I'm open to instant replay on this, but it's yet to be determined whether the Gabbard pick is a hit or an error. In short, it's been a remarkable 7-day stretch. If Trump were playing, he'd be named unanimously player of the week. And that can be so even including hitting into an unassisted triple play to cost his team a game one day, which brings me to the Matt Gaetz pick.I fully realize that in my column earlier in the week, I said it's Go time, and that if necessary, recess appointments could be made to get Trump's team in and on the job as soon as possible to not waste one day of the new term. For those that worry that such a stance runs afoul of the Constitution, my position would of course have limitations. If a nominee garners obvious support with the majority party, and the only thing slowing the process is the minority party using process maneuvers to run out the clock, I'm all for the recess appointment to speed up the process. That would require both House and Senate approval to call a recess, though. If, however, the nominee does not enjoy majority support, or that support is very much in question, the fast-track goes out the window, as it should, and the hearing process must ensue. There are three public reactions to all of Trump's nominations. There are positive endorsements, statements of opposition, or radio silence. Technically, in Washington, there's a fourth angle - publicly claiming you support someone while doing everything in your power covertly to sabotage the nomination and hope you don't get blood on your hands if the nomination is eventually scuttled. South Dakota Senator John Thune, as I expected, won the three-person contest for Majority Leader yesterday, besting John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida. In a press conference yesterday, Thune said he would do everything in his power to get nominations through the confirmation process as soon as possible. Senator Scott ran a more public campaign than the other two, playing up his closeness to the Trump camp, promising to ram through his nominees and fast-tracking the President's ambitious agenda for the next four years. Here is a sequence of tweets by Senator Scott from this week alone. ]]>