In my new Confirmation Tales post, I explore how the internal divisions within Republican ranks after the takeover of the Senate in 1995 complicated the battle against Clinton’s judicial nominees. Along with cameo appearances by Cal Ripken Jr., Bill Barr, John Yoo, and Ann Coulter, I recount my decision to leave Orrin Hatch’s staff. An excerpt:
As I have recounted, when I signed on with Senator Orrin Hatch in the fall of 1992, I was flabbergasted to hear his chief of staff for his entire Senate operations announce that “We’re in an election cycle, so we’re not going to do anything controversial” and “Clinton won on health-care reform, so we’re not going to fight him on that.”
In November 1994, that two-year election cycle came to an end. Hatch won election to a fourth term by a margin of more than 40 points. What’s more, thanks in part to the massive unpopularity of Clinton’s health-care reform plan, Republicans won control of both the House (for the first time in decades) and the Senate (gaining an extraordinary nine seats).
And nothing changed, so far as I could detect, in how Hatch’s chief of staff approached things.
I thought it unlikely that another Supreme Court vacancy was in the offing. I was tired of internal fights with the front office to get Hatch to advance the principles he avowed. And I had no interest in trying to make a career on the Hill. So I decided that it was time to move on.
I was grateful then, and with hindsight am even more grateful now, for the 2-1/2 years that I worked for Hatch, and I am proud of what we accomplished…. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to do my part to help Hatch and other Senate Republicans make compelling cases against the Barkett and Sarokin nominations and to enable them to discover that they could score big political points in fighting against liberal judges.
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