Like some other analysts, I have gotten the distinct impression that President Barack Obama would just loooooove the Republicans to make a big fuss over his decision to install Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Here is a significant sign:
Here’s a pretty clear sign of which way the politics are moving in the fight over Obama’s decision to employ a recess appointment to install Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Senator Scott Brown — who’s facing a stiff populist challenge from Elizabeth Warren, the creator of the agency — has now come out in support of the move. His statement, sent over by his office:
“I support President Obama’s appointment today of Richard Cordray to head the CFPB. I believe he is the right person to lead the agency and help protect consumers from fraud and scams. While I would have strongly preferred that it go through the normal confirmation process, unfortunately the system is completely broken. If we’re going to make progress as a nation, both parties in Washington need to work together to end the procedural gridlock and hyper-partisanship.”
Other Senate and House Republicans have denounced Obama’s recess appointment of Cordray as an act of tyranny and worse. Scott Brown’s Massachusetts colleague, Mitt Romney, just released a statement calling the move “Chicago style politics at its worst.”
Yet Scott Brown is now breaking decisively with his fellow Republicans, defending the recess appointment as necessary to break through partisan gridlock in order to “protect consumers from fraud and scams.”
Brown, of course, is being challenged by a candidate who may be more identified with protecting consumers against Wall Street than anyone else on the national stage right now.
Listening to Obama on the stump, it’s clear he is setting up an issue.
And I do suspect Republicans will eat the baited hook.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.