Joseph Lawler shares with Washington Examiner readers the interesting observation that almost all of the political battle surrounding the appointment of the next Federal Reserve chairman has been taking place among Democrats.
Other than an August outburst from Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, who said, “I wouldn’t want Larry Summers to mow my yard,” Republicans have mostly refrained from commenting on the months-long, high-profile contest between Summers and current Fed Vice Chairwoman Janet Yellen.
Yet the GOP’s relative silence on the nomination process, which has been put on hold while the administration focuses on the civil war in Syria, does not indicate that Republicans are any more comfortable with Summers than they would be with Yellen.
Many Democrats and liberal groups are speaking out in an effort to stop Summers’s nomination before it gets started. Republicans, for now, are happy to watch as Obama spends political capital on a process that is usually routine. If and when Summers gets the official nomination, expect the Republican opposition to become just as fierce and vocal, and perhaps even more so, than the Democratic insurrection has been so far.
And Summers’ candidacy will likely require Republican aid. Three prominent liberal Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee — Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — have suggested they would vote against Summers, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. With the panel divided 12-10 between Democrats and Republicans, the Democrats’ refusal to go along could mean that Summers’ nomination could be in the hands of committee Republicans. Without support from at least three Republicans, Summers could fail to advance to a confirmation vote in the full Senate.
Many Democrats perceive Summers as too close to Wall Street and do not trust him on matters of financial regulation. Twenty of the upper chamber’s Democrats, in response to rumors in July that Summers would be the pick, signed a letter circulated by Brown that pointedly recommended Yellen for her pro-regulation views. Merkley and Warren also signed the letter.
But Republicans, who in general view current monetary policy as recklessly loose, are less likely to see such a distinction between the two candidates.
“I assume a lot of Republicans will be opposed to both,” an aide to Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana told the Washington Examiner. Vitter is a member of the Banking Committee.
None of the Republicans on the panel were willing to comment on Summers. But many of them in the past have opposed nominations of Fed officials less activist and less partisan than Summers, who has been one of the top architects of Democratic economic policy over the past two decades as an adviser to Obama and Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton.
