Bill Cassidy Backs Todd Blanche, Clearing Path To Nomination

Bill Cassidy just handed Todd Blanche the votes he needed, and honestly, it's hard to see how this played out any other way. Cassidy has spent months as the guy Beltway reporters loved to speculate about, the maybe-no vote who could gum up the works. Turns out he wasn't looking for a fight, he was looking for reassurance. Now he's got it, and the nomination moves.

What's worth noting here is how little drama actually came out of this once someone bothered to talk to Cassidy directly instead of treating him like a mystery box. He's not exactly a bomb-thrower. He voted to convict Trump at the last impeachment trial and paid for it politically back home. If he's on board with Blanche, that tells you something about where the nominee actually sits, not just where the confirmation math sits.

Democrats wanted this to be a longer fight. They wanted a defector, a headline about Republican fracture. Instead they got a reminder that the GOP conference, even its more independent members, isn't as brittle as the coverage keeps suggesting. Cassidy did his own homework, asked his own questions, and made his own call. That's supposed to be the point of the process.

None of this means Blanche sails through without more debate on the floor, and it shouldn't. But the idea that one senator's holdout status was going to blow up an AG pick always felt like wishful thinking dressed up as suspense. Sometimes a nominee gets through because he's qualified and the objections were never as deep as advertised.