Some months back, I wrote on the issue of Neera Tanden being the chosen appointee for the Head of the United States Office of Management and Budget. The bureaucracy is a very powerful entity and Biden saw fit to place a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist in the role of leading it (see Biden Wants a Wild Conspiracy Theorist as OMB Head, Republicans Laugh Uncontrollably). Tanden was also caught in a scandal in which she outed a sexual harassment victim. Further, she spread conspiracy theories about Russians hacking voting machines in 2016 in order to deny that Donald Trump had won.

Wow.@neeratanden has quite the list of accomplishments:

1) Physically assaulted a staffer
2) Outted a sexual harassment victim
3) Spreading Russian vote-hacking conspiracies denying Clinton's 2016 loss

h/t @ggreenwald https://t.co/lBhhjVJUK9

— Brad Polumbo 🇺🇸⚽️ 🏳️‍🌈 (@brad_polumbo) November 30, 2020

At the time, Republicans were still favored to keep the Senate, and Tanden’s nomination looked to be dead on arrival. Well, we all know how things turned out in Georgia, and that’s thrown a wrench in things.

Today, Tanden sat for her confirmation hearing and apologized for all the insane, rabidly partisan stuff she had previously put on social media.

Neera Tanden, Biden’s pick for OMB, apologizes when asked by Portman about her tweets attacking GOP. “Senator I appreciate people’s concerns about my tweets and I’ve regretted them and I deleted tweets because I regretted the tone …I am sorry for any hurt that they have caused”

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 9, 2021

Whether Tanden’s apology is sincere or not — and you can almost bet it’s not given her incredibly partisan rancor prior — is sort of beside the point. Tanden spread provably false conspiracy theories about the legitimacy of an election. I’ve been assured that such is tantamount to promoting insurrection, never mind her brush with the #metoo movement by outing a victim. The new rules are in effect, and under them, Tanden should not garner a single Republican vote.

In short, don’t play the sucker here who doesn’t hold the Democrats to their own standards. Of course, many Republicans love playing the sucker, so you can bet your bottom dollar that Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, and others will take Tanden’s apology to heart and approve her. Of course, such a decision also ignores that she’s imminently unqualified for the position in the first place. This is not a woman who should be heading up the OMB, a position typically staffed by an apolitical figure for obvious reasons.

The best play here is for all 50 GOP Senators to vote no. That then throws the grenade in the lap of West Virginia’s Joe Manchin. Let him own a deciding vote. Bailing him and his party out by having Republicans vote for this woman would be the wrong move on so many levels.