In a rational world, there should be no reason that Loretta Lynch shouldn’t be confirmed right away as the next Attorney General.  After all, she’s been through Senate confirmation twice before, and as Steve Benen points out, she was approved unanimously.

Ah, but the trick is I said “in a rational world,” and that excludes the whacky world of the GOP and Sen. Ted Cruz.

The junior senator from Texas opined that her confirmation should wait until after the new Senate is sworn in in January because it would be totally wrong to confirm any cabinet position during the lame duck session.

President Obama’s Attorney General nominee deserves fair and full consideration of the United States Senate, which is precisely why she should not be confirmed in the lame duck session of Congress by senators who just lost their seats and are no longer accountable to the voters.

But that rule only applies to Democratic presidents.  In November 2006, after the Republicans lost a lot of seats in the midterms, President Bush fired Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and appointed Robert Gates to replace him.  He was confirmed 95-2 in December 2006; long before the new Senate was seated.  As far as the Constitution is concerned, the new Senate doesn’t get to work until January 2015.  It’s not like the current one went out of business on November 5.  (Well, at least technically it didn’t; it’s had the lights out for the last four years as far as getting anything done is concerned.)

I suspect that Mr. Cruz’s objection is merely a delaying tactic until the new Senate is seated, but for the life of me I can’t fathom any other reason that a black woman appointed by a black Democratic president would face any trouble being confirmed by a GOP majority-led Senate, can you?