One consequence of the Democrats ending the filibuster is the era of presidential nominees answering questions from the opposing party is now over:
Johnson could go into the process knowing he didn’t need a single Republican vote to be confirmed. If Johnson could be confident that he had at least 51 of the Senate’s 55 Democratic votes — he actually had all of them — he didn’t need to pay attention to Republicans at all.
And so he didn’t. . .
On Nov. 15, several Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee . . . sent Johnson a list of more than 50 questions, most of them about immigration, that had not been answered during Johnson’s confirmation hearing. . .
In a Dec. 12 letter, Johnson essentially blew them off.
Johnson was the first post-nuclear nominee, and I think we’ll soon find his scorn for the opposing party’s questions has set a precedent.
POSTSCRIPT: Johnson, by the way, wasn’t nominated to run a highly political department like HHS, Justice, or the IRS. He was nominated to run homeland security!
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