Facing indications of soft support among Senate Republicans amid several controversies, conservative commentator Stephen Moore said Tuesday that he won’t drop out of consideration for nomination to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.
“Yeah I’ll continue to pursue it, I haven’t really finished all my paperwork. We expect to finish it this week,” Moore told the Washington Examiner.
Moore, who is a fellow with the Heritage Foundation and advised President Trump on his 2017 tax reform push, dismissed negative coverage of his past writing, commentary, and personal life as “a smear campaign.”
“It’s highly unusual. It’s somewhat flattering that the Left is this afraid of me that they’re engaging in this level of attack, but politics is a bloodsport,” said Moore.
Moore has yet to reach out to Republican senators to court their votes, saying he has waited on Trump to formally nominate him, which Trump has yet to do. Republican senators were quick to remind reporters of that fact when asked if they support Moore’s nomination.
“If he is nominated, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Moore faces skepticism over his past writings about women, his reversal on a number of economic views to bring them into alignment with Trump’s preferences, and his background as a partisan activist, which would be unusual at the independent Fed. His supporters, including National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and prominent conservative economist Art Laffer, both friends of Moore, argue that he would bring an outsider’s perspective to the central bank.
McConnell’s fellow senators mostly demurred when asked if they will support Moore. Yet there are signs of Republican skepticism. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the highest-ranking female Republican in the Senate, told reporters that it “is very unlikely that I would support that person.”
Ernst said she had let the White House know where she stood.
Asked if Moore had enough votes to be confirmed, Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., hesitated.
“He’s got to get nominated first,” Thune said.
Republicans’ hesitation might be an indication they expect Trump to reconsider nominating Moore, as he did with with former presidential candidate and pizza chain CEO Herman Cain after saying he’d appoint him to the Fed board. Cain, though, faced more vocal opposition from Republicans.
“It’s not as difficult as Herman Cain’s was, but it’s not as easy as some others would be or you might want it to be,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., a member of the Senate Banking Committee. “I’m grateful that Stephen’s willing to continue to be considered because so far I can’t imagine he’s having a lot of fun being considered.”
The selections of Cain and Moore are seen as Trump’s attempt to sway the central bank to keep its interest rate target low to boost stock markets and economic growth. Trump has not seen his preferences for easy money reflected thus far in the his appointments of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell or others on the board, which has seven members when it is at full strength. Moore has echoed Trump’s criticism of the Fed for raising interest rates and has argued that the Fed should target commodity prices, rather than overall inflation, as it currently does.
Moore dismissed criticism of his qualifications from conservative economists as “outliers” and pointed to a recent letter of support signed by Laffer and other conservative economists and political activists as evidence of support.
Senators said that Trump alone will decide the path forward for Moore. Moore said on Tuesday that he has yet to finalize his financial disclosure or go through the standard FBI background check that precedes nominations.
“To me the broader discussion is, as you put forward nominees … vet your nominees really carefully because time is not necessarily on our side and the more controversial the nominee, the more political capital it takes to bring them across the finish line, and that’s spent political capital,” said Cramer. “Steven Moore right now, I don’t where he would stand. They’ll have to decide how much they want to spend on him.”
Trump again criticized the Fed Tuesday, tweeting that the central bank “has incessantly lifted interest rates, even though inflation is very low, and instituted a very big dose of quantitative tightening.”
Trump called for the Fed to consider re-implementing emergency actions similar to those it took around the 2008 financial crisis, including cutting interest rates and buying U.S. debt to hold on its balance sheet.
“We have the potential to go…up like a rocket if we did some lowering of rates, like one point, and some quantitative easing,” Trump tweeted.
