Mitch McConnell's Loretta Lynch Gamble

Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch

Washington politics is a tough game to write about in a meaningful way, because almost everything you read about it comes across as partisan or cynical.  The reality is that most people feel deeply jaded by the political process, and Washington pundits know this better than anything.  They know that a show like Veep, not a show like The West Wing, is more indicative of what happens in Washington-that passing meaningful legislation is usually impossible and comes with damning consequences.  And it's literally impossible not to believe that journalists and pundits don't favor one side over the other-smart, ambitious reporters, the ones who try to maintain balance, may see the value of an unbiased press and weigh it heavily into their work, but smart and ambitious people have opinions.  Lots of them, which is why even seemingly non-partisan pundits like Stu Rothenberg and Charlie Cook occasionally show their true proclivities in their writing.

So taking this in mind, as someone who writes about politics several times a week and reads about it every single day, I have to say that it's rare that something bugs me in a meaningful way as bad politicking or troublesome logic.  Most things seem like they're short gains, and don't have a lot of long-range thinking attached to them, but I can usually figure out the motives of a party.  However, I just don't get what is going on with the appointment of Loretta Lynch for Attorney General.

Yes, yes, I know the logistics of why Mitch McConnell, a very smart man with a brilliant mind for politics, wanted to hold up her nomination.  The GOP didn't agree with the President's decision on immigration, his executive action on the issue, but they can't get the votes past a veto to override the decision.  I also know that in the human trafficking bill, the abortion language is also being used as an excuse over the Lynch confirmation.  These both seem like pretty solid arguments in theory, but there's a few things that seem to be sticking in my craw about it that seems uncharacteristic for McConnell, who is someone who knows the value of political capital, to be utilizing.

For starters, the immigration debate, which was the initial holdup, was never going to be won.  Eric Holder is already Attorney General, and while the President would like Loretta Lynch nominated, he's not going to throw a major piece of his legacy out the window to get a lame-duck AG.  The human trafficking bill is similar, in some ways, and may lend itself to an abortion debate the GOP wants to have (they feel they can win it in the case of public opinion), but it's a bad move for a party that has badly under-performed with female voters in presidential elections.  The GOP may well get a compromise out of the human trafficking bill, but again, this was a pretty small win to bet on when picking a larger, more winnable battle would have been a better decision.

It's also strange that they picked Loretta Lynch, who has to be one of the least controversial nominees the Obama administration has had.  I listened to the hearings, and she's smart-as-a-whip, and would certainly be, by any Republicans' definition, a vast improvement on the incumbent.  This isn't a case of someone like Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General nominee who had made controversial comments about the NRA and gun control-this wasn't a nominee that is a particularly striking example of someone the GOP is going to loath.  She is certainly not Eric Holder, who has taken a number of positions through the Obama administration that the GOP disagreed with.  By all accounts Holder's resignation should be something the Republicans want to expedite.  It's also worth noting that picking the first African-American woman to be Attorney General as the nominee you want to hold-up is hardly going to help you mend fences with either of these two constituencies.

So it's a puzzlement to me, particularly since the alternative here is "worse" for the GOP.  This isn't a judicial nominee, for example, where there's a chance that they can take a knee and hope that President Jeb Bush improves the options.  It's either Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch-that's it.  At the end of the day we know that if this actually went up for a vote, Lynch would surely win the votes to take the seat, if only to remove Holder from office, and that holding up a separate piece of legislation would have been a more behooving move.  Perhaps there's a long-game here that I don't get from Mitch McConnell, or perhaps he made a mistake and he can't find a saving grace to get him out of it.  Whatever the reason, this is a political bet I just don't know the motives of the Republicans on, and it doesn't seem to be one that they're winning.