{"id":4359,"date":"2005-06-03T10:40:08","date_gmt":"2005-06-03T14:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4359.html"},"modified":"2005-06-03T10:40:08","modified_gmt":"2005-06-03T14:40:08","slug":"a-golden-opportunity-which-dems-may-miss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-golden-opportunity-which-dems-may-miss\/","title":{"rendered":"A golden opportunity — which Dems may miss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Cox’s nomination<\/a> to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission is a unique opportunity for Dems. Because the post needs Senate confirmation, Dems can highlight Cox’s record of hostility for corporate regulations as further evidence of the Bush administration’s willingness to comply with the demands of Wall Street lobbyists.<\/p>\n

If only Dems would take advantage of the opportunity.<\/p>\n

I was anxious to see the reaction from lawmakers in today’s papers to Cox’s nomination to gauge what kind of opposition Cox might face from Senate Dems. Senate Banking Committee member Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), for example, said<\/a> he would wait to get more information about Cox’s views before deciding how to vote on him, though he’s approaching the nomination with some skepticism. Fine.<\/p>\n

At least one important Senate Dem, however, took the opposite approach<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While some anticipated a tough confirmation process, no one Thursday predicted that he would be blocked. Indeed, Democratic California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who had held back supporting Cox when he was a possible judicial candidate for the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, agreed to introduce him to the Senate Banking Committee, which will consider his nomination.<\/p>\n

“I have no reason to oppose him and believe he’s qualified to do the job,” Feinstein said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can appreciate that Feinstein may have some home-state loyalties to consider here, but if she can’t think of any reason to oppose Cox’s nomination, she’s just not paying very close attention to the guy’s record<\/a>. For goodness sakes, the NYT described Cox<\/a> today as “a devoted student of Ayn Rand, the high priestess of unfettered capitalism.”<\/p>\n

If Dems were planning to put up some kind of resistence here, Feinstein is helping to end the fight before it begins.
\n
\nPost Script<\/i>: I acknowledge from the outset that this is largely irrelevant, but to help provide context to Chris Cox’s style of politics, I thought I’d highlight this quote<\/a> from earlier this year:<\/p>\n

“America’s Operation Iraqi Freedom is still producing shock and awe, this time among the blame-America-first crowd,” [California Rep. Chris Cox] crowed. Then he said, “We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What does Cox’s bizarre beliefs about non-existent weapons of mass destruction have to do with his ability to head the SEC? As far as I can tell, not much. But it’s a reminder that Cox certainly isn’t part of the “reality-based” community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Cox’s nomination to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission is a unique opportunity for Dems. Because the post needs Senate confirmation, Dems can highlight Cox’s record of hostility for corporate regulations as further evidence of the Bush administration’s willingness to comply with the demands of Wall Street lobbyists. If only Dems would take advantage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}