Senate GOP to try again on Todd Blanche, Trump's pick for attorney general

A committee vote getting a do-over isn't exactly breaking news in Washington, but it's worth asking why Todd Blanche's nomination needed one in the first place. This is the guy who spent the last several years literally sitting next to Trump in courtrooms, defending him against everything prosecutors could throw at him. That's not a resume gap, that's the whole point of picking him. If you wanted an attorney general who understood exactly how the Justice Department had been weaponized against a sitting political figure, you'd be hard pressed to find someone with a better vantage point than his own defense lawyer.

The theatrics around getting the vote scheduled tell you more about the temperature in the committee room than about Blanche himself. Judiciary fights over AG picks are always partly about the nominee and partly about relitigating the last four years of DOJ decisions, and this one is no different. Democrats see a defense attorney turned attorney general and smell conflict of interest. Republicans see someone who watched the department up close, from the wrong end of the telescope, and think that's exactly the corrective the building needs.

None of that answers the practical question, which is whether Blanche can actually run a department of 115,000 people instead of just one high-profile client. That's a fair thing to press him on in a hearing room, and it's fine if senators want to take a second run at the vote to sort it out. What's less fine is treating a scheduling snag as proof of some deeper scandal when what actually happened is pretty mundane: committees redo votes sometimes. Save the outrage for something that's actually earned it.