Barrasso Says Pompeo Opposition Is All About the ‘Resistance’

Former Kansas Republican congressman Mike Pompeo got 15 Democratic votes last year for CIA director, but there appears to be a possibility not a single Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will vote to confirm him as secretary of state.

That includes the panel’s two Democrats who previously supported him, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Tim Kaine of Virginia.

What explains the erosion?

“The resistance,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Friday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

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“What you’re seeing, I think, is this ‘resistance’ movement by the Democrats to the president of the United States, to Donald Trump,” he said. “They don’t like the fact that he got elected, don’t want to let him have his team in place. We need a full team in place. The world’s a dangerous place And there does seem to be this effort to resist anything President Trump wants to do.”

With Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) also opposing Pompeo, it is possible the nominee might not get a favorable recommendation from the committee.

Pompeo deserves the support, Barrasso said.

“He was very convincing yesterday, showed how competent he is, as well as confident — confident in his faith in democracy and diplomacy, with putting America first,” he said. “And I think he’ll do a great job as secretary of state.”

Barrasso lambasted Democratic criticism of Pompeo, contrasting it with the treatment that John Kerry received when then-President Barack Obama nominated him to be secretary of state. Barrasso said he and Kerry had many disagreements in their worldview.

“Yet he got bipartisan support,” he said. “The president needed a team in place in a dangerous world. President Trump needs his team in place in a dangerous world.”

Pompeo certainly is qualified, Barrasso said. He noted that the nominee has served as a member of Congress and CIA director, and he also graduated first in his class at West Point before getting a law degree from Harvard University.

“He’s a realist,” he said. “He knows what the world is really like, not the rose-colored glasses that some people like to look at the world through.”

Democratic opposition, Barrasso said, is about more than simply opposing Trump. Democrats in the Senate have personal ambition, he added.

“I believe there’s this whole group of people in the Democratic Party in the Senate right now who never thought they could run for president,” he said. “They were all convinced Hillary Clinton was going to win and then Tim Kaine was next in line, so they would never have a chance.

“The day Donald Trump got elected president, they said, ‘Well he’s going to be one term.’ That was their mindset, and whoever would get the Democratic nomination in 2020 would waltz into the White House.”

Many Democratic senators with an eye on the White House are “trying to out-liberal each other” and see opposition to Pompeo as a way to burnish those credentials, Barrasso said.

Barrasso said the Senate is making progress on confirmations despite Democratic obstructionism. He noted that senators confirmed 10 nominees this week.

Related: Five Dumbest Questions Dems Asked Pompeo During His Confirmation Hearing

But it has been a slog. Democrats have taken to insisting on a full 30 hours of debate on nominations — even on noncontroversial picks who eventually receive unanimous or near-unanimous support.

Prior to Trump, the common practice was to waive those rules for nominees with no substantive opposition.

“I’m ready to change the rules on this,” he said. “I’ve made speeches to that effect on the floor of the Senate to shorten the time. They don’t need 30 hours of debate to get confirmed 96-1, whether it’s a judge or an ambassador.”

PoliZette senior writer Brendan Kirby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.

(photo credit, homepage and article images: John Barrasso [1], [2], CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore)