President Trump’s nomination strategy

OPINION:

Social conservatives need to learn how a businessman thinks, namely, the businessman in the White House.

Some social conservatives think President Trump’s nomination of Chai Feldblum to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is anathema to conservative principles. She favors rights related to sexual orientation over religious liberty and generally views the religious right’s agenda as discriminatory. Ben Shapiro called it “President Trump’s Worst Federal Nomination.” It’s not difficult to infer why such an ideology is opposed by conservatives, but I think they’re missing the point and not understanding the game. This is chess, not winner take all poker.

Let’s consider the cards the president was dealt. Even President Trump can’t control his hand. He only controls how he plays it. The president was given 3 options:

Option One — Neutralize Ms. Feldblum by making a deal that gets two additional conservatives on the EEOC. This would give the EEOC a 3-2 Republican majority and allow conservatives to set the EEOC’s agenda.

Option Two — Tell Sen. Chuck Schumer that Ms. Feldblum is too radical and wait (forever) for Mr. Schumer to provide a less controversial pick for the Democratic seat or simply nominate the two Republicans without a packaged Democrat, assuring Mr. Schumer’s blocking the Republicans.

Option Three — Nominate no one.

Only one of the above options stops Chai Feldblum’s radical agenda and allows the EEOC to be reined in. That’s the option Mr. Trump pursued. That is option One.

Conservative critics of the president’s decision are thinking in absolutist terms while failing to recognize that even if Ms. Feldblum wasn’t renominated, her term still won’t end until June 2018. With no Republican nominees, the law would allow Ms. Feldblum to hold over for several months after that.

The two options proposed by conservatives — don’t nominate Ms. Feldblum and either wait for a more moderate Schumer pick or nominate two Republicans that never get to the floor — would have been the most efficient way to secure Ms. Feldblum’s radical agenda for the EEOC. The president recognized these complexities and made the right move.

Now before you start losing your minds and eating each other up, consider the fact that Chuck Schumer and Company think that would be just dandy. Mr. Schumer, a master at poking the cobra, loves nothing more than to have Republicans and conservatives fighting with each other. It’s all “divide and conquer.” Don’t take the bait.

It’s a real shame that the only ones getting in the way of a conservative EEOC agenda are conservatives who aren’t pressuring the Senate to get cloture on the two Republican EEOC nominees. It’s time for them, as hard as it is, to stand back from the forest and be realistic about the cards dealt to Mr. Trump.

The president’s business instincts serve the conservative agenda well. The EEOC is currently holding a 2-1 Democratic majority. Nothing will more effectively threaten conservative values and principles than allowing independent agencies to be run by holdovers simply because resistance to one radical blinds conservatives from seeing that the result is giving that same radical a majority agenda.

I founded LabMD, a cancer detection company with more than 700,000 patients that was destroyed by the FTC, an Obama-controlled independent agency. I know from personal experience that when these bureaucrats have majority control they are destructive and ruthless. While their guns are pointed at your temple, they tell Congress, the press and the public they are saving the world.

As due process goes missing, they utterly destroy you (and your cancer facility) when you dare to push back. They have the congressionally approved power to drag you through investigations and courts for years, draining you dry so that you are destroyed before you “win.”

There is no “win” when one is fighting corruption. You will be harmed on the battlefield. If these bureaucrats will kill a cancer facility for exposing their corruption and incompetence, there is nobody they won’t harm. Stalling these appointments in seeking absolutes helps the deeply embedded, unelected rulers of this country who are fighting for their survival.

We can’t purge these people overnight. They’ve been allowed to infest for decades. That’s why it’s a war in Washington now. We have to accept singles and doubles rather than refusing to play without a grand slam. If you’re going to play it that way you may as well hand the keys over to Mr. Schumer. Let’s support Mr. Trump in his nomination strategy and help him keep bureaucrats neutralized.

• Michael J. Daugherty is CEO, LabMD and The Justice Society.