Donald Trump is getting his cabinet. Today, the Senate confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services. Yesterday, it confirmed Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. Trump has now welcomed into his administration the two nominees who represent the most dramatic departures from the kind of appointee one would expect from a Republican president. This was by design. Supporters of these picks made two broad arguments in their favor: that the parts of the government atop which they would sit needed a skeptic overseeing them, and that they both brought new voters into Trump’s coalition by endorsing him and deserved some kind of reward upon his victory.
Concerning Gabbard and Kennedy specifically (and not the broader case for skeptical actors overseeing the bureaucracy, to which I am sympathetic), the second argument was more persuasive. Both were Democrats until quite recently, and they may well have tipped a close election in Trump’s favor by activating their idiosyncratic constituencies. One could reasonably describe both as existing in the “horseshoe” of our politics. It is a heterogenous and hard-to-define region. But it is a generally anti-elite and anti-establishment place that has understandably grown in stature as elites and the establishment have lost popular favor.
Gabbard and Kennedy also until quite recently (and perhaps still) have views that more align them with the Left. This introduced an initial uncertainty into their confirmations. For a time, it appeared that some Republicans would be skeptical of the skeptics because of their left-wing records, and that some Democrats would support them for the same reason. That is not how things shook out. All Democrats opposed both nominees. Kennedy endured the amusing spectacle of having Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, his former roommate (talk about elite chumminess), harangue him during his confirmation hearings. And all Republicans except Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell supported both nominees.
The Constitution established the Senate deliberately at some remove from the momentary undulations of public opinion. But partisanship, rather than institutional design, is the better guide to understanding these nominations. Republicans under Trump’s transactional influence proved willing to subdue objections they may otherwise have had to Kennedy and Gabbard, and swallowed the horseshoe. Democrats, responding to Trump, proved more willing to deprive him of a win than to extend favor to people who until recently were (and perhaps still are) their fellow-travelers; they spat the horseshoe out. For now, it is Republicans, not Democrats, who are flexible enough to accommodate a coalition of the unconventional.
One significant test of this new environment remains at the cabinet level: Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Trump’s pro-union secretary of labor nominee. Republicans’ willingness to subordinate principle to their perception of the demands of Trump and his new coalition will likely face other tests in the future as well.