Only a political geek like me can be glued to the 50 inch plasma watching the Senate confirmation hearings for Trump’s Cabinet picks like it’s the 7th game of the World Series.  It can be a bit of an emotional roller coaster…bumping around from infuriation, to inspiration, and yes, even all the way back to the screeching halt of boredom.  The Democrats, for their part, will gleefully tell you how much they hate the Cabinet picks…and this is as obvious as a brick through a window as one endures their uber-partisan questioning.  It should not go unnoticed, however, that when President Obama was elected in 2008, most of his Cabinet picks were confirmed either before, or shortly after Inauguration Day…with a lot of help from Republicans.  So much for returning the favor.  Anyway, let’s take a quick look at my version of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly…Senate Confirmation Edition…that hopefully would make Clint Eastwood proud…

The Good…This was TOO easy.  James “Mad Dog” Mattis, Secretary of Defense.  Retired Marine Corps General Mattis last served as the 11th Commander of the U.S. Central Command, appointed by President Obama (way to go, Barack!) to replace General Petraeus.  I mean, Mad Dog?  C’mon.   I know I’m gonna sleep pretty damn good at night knowing our Secretary of Defense is Bad Ass X 50.  Can’t you just picture this guy grabbing Putin and Assad and knocking their heads together like the Three Stooges?  I heard someone on TV say he has a bear rug in his house.  It’s not dead…it’s just too scared to move.  My man-crush on this guy is blossoming as we speak.

His performance at the Senate Confirmation hearing was nothing short of masterful.  One absolutely classic exchange went like this…Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) pulled the following question out of her liberal playbook, “Do you believe that allowing LGBT Americans to serve in the military or women in combat is undermining our lethality?   Without missing a beat, General Mattis replied, “Frankly, senator, I’ve never cared much about two consenting adults and who they go to bed with.”  Strangely seeming to enjoy that Senatorial Bitch-Slap, the Senator came right back with, “So the answer is no?”  After a bit more back and forth where Gillibrand continued to embarrass herself, Senator John McCain cut her off and reprimanded her, and in formal Senatorial-speak, basically told her to shut her big stupid yap.

The Bad…Clearly Marco Rubio must still be stinging a bit from the campaign.  Little Marco? Hmmm…No guy likes to be called little ANYTHING, if you catch my drift.  Rubio decided to make an embarrassing spectacle of himself in questioning Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, formerly Exxon Mobile CEO.  Tillerson is a guy who has dealt directly with scores of countries and world leaders for decades, understands the nuances, the cultures, and as Secretary of State, would be able to hit the ground running like Jesse Owens.  One particularly disturbing line of questioning was when Rubio, in a quite lecturing and belittling sort of way, attempted to get Tillerson to declare Vladimir Putin a war criminal…something even the Obama administration would not do.  Marco knew damn well there’s zero chance of Tillerson taking that bait, but he continued like a petulant child that can’t get his way.  This display by Rubio was nothing more than political grandstanding, and a big middle finger to Trump…who humiliated Rubio every which way during the campaign.  Little Marco just got a lot smaller in my book.

The Ugly…Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) must have used Rubio’s embarrassing display as a tutorial of sorts, and proved to be quite the student as he exceeded Rubio’s version of Kabuki theater in spectacular fashion.  Booker took the unprecedented action of delivering formal testimony to plea for his fellow Senators to vote against another fellow Senator, Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Trump’s nominee for Attorney General.  This has NEVER happened.  After praising Senator Sessions in the past, Booker is now basically declaring him a racist while ignoring his outstanding civil rights record…namely, prosecuting KKK members accused of murder, as well as filing multiple desegregation lawsuits as a U.S. attorney.  But c’mon Cory, where’s your originality?  A far leftist like yourself calling some Republican racist…again…is getting more stale than the discounted day old bread down at the Safeway.  The way you Libs have cheapened the word racist, you may as well have called him an eggplant…it would have about as much meaning. Here’s the deal with our friend Cory from New Jersey,…both him and the Democrat party are dreaming of him…an African-American…being the second coming Barack Obama. This was his lame, and somewhat warped attempt at creating a “moment”…one that would replicate Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, where he addressed the convention and uttered the famous passage, “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America, there’s the United States of America.”  Instant rock star…at least in Democratic circles. Unfortunately, Booker’s attempt at a similar “springboard” to presidential prominence falls shorter than the jockeys at the Kentucky Derby.  So, the racially obsessed Democrat party dreams of being able to simply plug in one light-skinned African-American for another like replacing a blown fuse?  And another experience-challenged junior Senator to boot.  To malign a patriotic public servant like Sessions as a racist for no other reason than the pursuit of political aspirations is both disgusting and transparent…and Booker and all of the political wizards pulling levers behind the curtain ought to be ashamed of themselves…period.

Newly elected Presidents should be afforded a significant degree of deference in assembling their Cabinet.  Confirmation hearings are fine, but check your agendas and showboating at the door.  As President Obama famously stated three days after his 2009 inauguration, “Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.”  Indeed.  Now I know why Ringling Brothers Circus is going out of business…they can no longer compete with the Democrats in Congress.