HEGSETH COULD STILL BE CONFIRMED, AND I'M NOT SURE WHY

The Bulwark's Marc Caputo now believes that Pete Hegseth might be winning his nomination fight:

... on Friday, the president-elect went out of his way to give an attaboy to Pete Hegseth just hours after the defense secretary pick scolded reporters who have been hounding him in the U.S. Capitol over accusations of sexual misconduct and drunkenness.

“Pete’s fighting like hell,” Trump told an adviser when he saw the video clip of Hegseth. “He’s a fighter.”

There are few political acts that Trump values more than ance in the face of media scrutiny. And Hegseth’s charge on Thursday—clearly directed at an audience in Mar-a-Lago—bought him both time and goodwill. After rampant speculation that he could soon drop his nomination, there is little expectation of that now.

But is Hegseth on the verge of victory? Or is it just that his defiance is strategically useful to Trump? Caputo's interviewees aren't sure:

Aides believe that the longer Hegseth remains in contention for the post, the higher his chances of confirmation will be, simply because it subjects GOP senators to a sustained pressure campaign from the MAGA base, and because many will have a hard time scuttling him in a public vote. Those aides also believe that if Hegseth is drawing fire from critics, there will be less attention and heat on Trump’s other controversial nominees like Kash Patel (FBI), Tulsi Gabbard (director of national intelligence), or Robert Kennedy Jr. (HHS).

“Hegseth is a heatshield,” said a senior Trump adviser. “Pete can take the heat, and that’s better for everyone else.”

But why use Hegseth as a "heatshield" when you have Kennedy, who's just as arrogant as Hegseth, and whose agenda really isn't Trump's agenda?

I think Trump has a mancrush on anyone who's defiant in a way that advances his own agenda. I'm sure he's greatly enjoying Hegseth's performance right now. But others in the GOP are fighting for Hegseth in a way they didn't fight for Matt Gaetz. They're turning the screws on Iowa senator Joni Ernst, who's up for reelection in two years and who still won't say she's voting for Hegseth. From the Des Moines Register:

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird penned a column in the conservative website Breitbart urging the Senate to confirm Trump's Cabinet nominees. Although it doesn't call out Ernst by name, she castigates the "D.C. politicians" who "think they can ignore the voices of their constituents and entertain smears from the same outlets that have pushed out lies for years."

"What we’re witnessing in Washington right now is a Deep State attempt to undermine the will of the people," Bird, a Trump endorser, wrote. "We must not let Washington kill nominations before the Constitutional confirmation process even begins."

... Steve Deace, an Iowa conservative commentator and media personality, posted on the social media website X that he would be willing to run against Ernst in a Republican primary if she seeks reelection in 2026.

(Steve Deace? Really? He endorsed Ted Cruz in 2016, then quit the GOP when Trump won the nomination and voted for a third-party candidate in the general election. He came back around to Trump after that and was an election truther in 2020, but he endorsed Ron DeSantis in the 2024 primaries.)

Whatever the reason, the GOP establishment wants Hegseth to win. Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation and the architect of Project 2025, has pledged $1 million in spending to get Hegseth approved.

Why him, when any other Trump nominee for this position is likely to be on board with the same agenda (expulsion of trans troops and "woke" generals, use of troops on U.S. territory)?

Is it because Hegseth is also expected to be pro-theocracy? Roberts is connected to the far-right Catholic group Opus Dei and Hegseth belongs to a Christian nationalist Protestant church. Even The New York Times acknowledged that Hegseth "has praised the brutal religious military campaigns of the past and has called for a Christian approach to governing," in a story called "Pete Hegseth and His ‘Battle Cry’ for a New Christian Crusade."

Is Hegseth still confirmable because big-money Christian nationalists don't want him to withdraw, even for another Trumpian hard-liner? Do they think he's the best choice because he's the most unabashed theocrat?

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If Hegseth gets a confirmation hearing, I assume Democrats will be afraid to bring up his church. They shouldn't be, if they know how to talk about it in the right way.

Of course they shouldn't say anything like what Dianne Feinstein stupidly said to Amy Coney Barrett in her 2017 confirmation hearing: "The dogma lives loudly within you." Anyone who questions Hegseth about his church needs to make it absolutely clear that the questions aren't about faith or religious dogma -- they focus on what the head of the church says about life right here on earth.

Amanda Marcotte notes that Hegseth

became deeply involved with the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS), moving to Tennessee to enroll his children in a branch of this fundamentalist organization. He also joined the associated denomination, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. Both are led by Doug Wilson....

The Times tells us:

on a podcast Mr. Hegseth said that he would not send his children to Harvard but would send them to Mr. Wilson’s college in Idaho.

The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, reported on that school, New Saint Andrews College, in 2006, telling us:

[Wilson] acknowledges that portraits of Lee and Confederate flags have adorned office and school walls at times and says that he believes in some – but not all – of the tenets on which the Southern confederacy was built: a society centered around God and belief, a simple farming life as opposed to a hectic modern one, and an emphasis on traditional family and community.

In a 2007 New York Times Magazine story on the school, Wilson described the depths of his conservatism this way:

Doug Wilson proudly declares himself more right-wing than most Idaho conservatives. “They voted for Bush; I’d vote for Jefferson Davis,” he chuckles.

A 2004 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center quotes a few inflammatory passages from a book Wilson co-wrote, Southern Slavery, as It Was:

"Slavery as it existed in the South ... was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence," the excerpts read in part. "There has never been a multiracial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world. ...

"Slave life was to them [slaves] a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care."

A Democratic senator could ask Hegseth: Do you agree with what the head of your chuch says about slavery? Do you admire the president of the Confederacy?

The SPLC report also tells us:

The world as Wilson sees it is divided not by race but by religion — biblical Christians versus all others. As he says in one of his books, "[I]f neither parent believes in Jesus Christ, then the children are foul — unclean."

There are two Jewish Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Richard Blumenthal and Jacky Rosen. Maybe one of them could ask, "Do you agree with Wilson that my children are 'foul' and 'unclean'?"

I don't expect this to happen. But if it did, I think it might give middle-of-the-road voters even more reason to question Hegseth's firness to serve. If Republicans could use Jeremiah Wright's words against Barack Obama, why not use Wilson's words against Hegseth?