Tuesday, January 29, 2013

With Cordray, GOP haste could make waste

Irony can always find a home in the political world.  When, for example, Republicans on Capitol Hill determinedly stalled President Obama's nomination of  Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren as director of the new U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,  she finally said, "To hell with it" and went off to Massachusetts to run for the U.S.Senate.

She defeated Scott Brown, the Republican incumbent, which, to the GOP's dismay,  cost it  a seat.  Do you think that in retrospect it would reconsider the trade-off that produced such  unintended consequences?

That Potomac vignette of the GOP's mulish  rejection of Warren could play out with a different setting this year.  The ruling by the all-Republican  three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals  disqualifying Obama's three appointments  to the National Labor Relations Board will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.  But some observers  are saying that it could also affect former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray's recess  appointment  to the consumer's group after another Republican blockade on Capitol Hill.

If so, in the scheme of things, he would be without a job. It might even encourage him to return to Ohio to challenge Gov. Kasich's re-election bid.  Cordray is a name mentioned in most recaps of the potential Democratic field and, so the reasoning goes, could be the strongest tie-breaker  within his party's field.

I'd say that in the Republicans'  haste  to say no- no- no, they're getting somewhat careless these days  about their own welfare. It has often been shown that haste makes waste.

Note:  My column on the Columbus Dispatch travelogues covering  Kasich in Davos has been posted on Plunderbund



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