Obama’s New Placeholder: Loretta Lynch
While President Obama is unveiling a whole boatload of new policies the new Republican controlled Senate is likely to fight him on a few, if not most, of those topics. From what we can tell, the GOP is likely to find common ground with the President on the Trans Pacific Trade Partnership, and the Net Neutrality movement with the FCC.
Where President Obama and the Republican Senate might start to drift apart, is over Loretta Lynch. But before Lynch can accept the position, the Senate has to confirm Obama’s decision. If you remember, it was a Republican House that blocked Obama’s appointee for Surgeon General, that led him to appoint the Ebola czar.
Both sides have strategies and tactics they can use, but ultimately, it will come down to this: Does Loretta Lynch see eye to eye with any Republicans in the Senate? Obama says he is confident she will get confirmed by the Senate. But when we took a closer look, she isn’t really all that different from Eric Holder.
Lynch agrees with Holder on using civilian courts to try terrorism suspects. That’s one strike with the Republicans. She went so far as to call it, the “best and only option” for prosecuting homegrown terrorists, US citizens, often recruited by ISIS or other Islamic militants via the internet.
Lynch also shares Holder’s views when it comes to Voter ID laws. The Justice Department has already interfered with several states, and they haven’t even been remotely consistent. In one state, Holder demanded the courts acquiesce to the Feds, while in another, they started to interfere right before the elections, and then moved to uphold the state law. Lynch vows to continue Holder’s efforts on that platform. Strike two.
That’s not all. Lynch also seems to agree with Holder, that massive banks are not just too big to fail, but their executives are too rich to jail. Holder promised to be “extremely aggressive” against the big banks on Wall Street, but so far, no criminal charges have been filed. Lynch issued an even softer statement. She says, it all comes down to “what you can prove.”
If that’s just a foul tip, strike three comes on the next pitch. Lynch’s stance on privacy. She says she wouldn’t want to do anything to “restrict the flow of vital information” when it comes to the FBI, NSA and CIA all spying on their own citizens, even BEFORE any criminal acts have been committed.
Perhaps the biggest difference between Lynch and Holder, is that Lynch has a clean slate. At least, for now. If Republicans bow to Obama on Loretta Lynch, you can be sure, it’s only an attempt to buy political capital for later discussions on immigration, the Common Core and Obamacare. But just because they play nice, doesn’t mean the President is playing by the same rules. He’s already made it clear, he doesn’t have any plans to back down.
