A rumored game of musical chairs had Perry going to DHS, Manchin to Energy, and a West Virginia Republican to the Senate. But in the end nobody moved.
With Stephen Bannon’s departure from the White House dominating the news today, a lot of political observers may have missed a story that appeared to show a machiavellian White House scheme falling flat:
Observers who can remember all the way back to the beginning of the Trump administration (a long time in Twitter years) may recall Manchin’s name came up for the Energy gig during the transition. But he was passed over for former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The Manchin talk didn’ t even continue long enough for it to become clear whether the West Virginian was interested.
But three unrelated developments revived it, at least in the media: the failure of Senate Republicans to enact health care legislation; the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to become White House Chief of Staff; and a party-switch by previously Democratic West Virginia governor Jim Justice.
It was pretty easy to design a razzle-dazzle play that would get Republicans a health care bill, and sure enough, it was reported at Bloomberg as a work in progress:
For this to transpire, of course, Rick Perry would have to agree to give up Energy for Homeland Security, and he quickly made noises that he was happy right where he was. Media folk pointed out that Perry and Trump had not exactly seen eye to eye on immigration enforcement in the past. And others fretted about the precision timing required to get Manchin confirmed and a reliable vote for “skinny repeal” sworn into the Senate.
In the end, it’s not clear if Perry balked, or Manchin passed, or Justice wanted to appoint himself to the hypothetical open seat, or if the whole thing was a Republican fantasy from the get-go. But this particular game of musical chairs ended before it began.
