I’ve been saying for a while that Pete Hegseth’s confirmation process was going to mark a major change in American politics that was facilitated and caused by the election of Donald Trump on Nov. 5. It’s pretty clear that the Democrats in the Senate haven’t been listening. Which is fine — they and their ideological bed-buddies can stay out of touch and in the political wilderness as long as they’d like, and the rest of us won’t mind a bit. In a previous column, I talked about what I call The Old Game, which is what you saw a great deal of at Hegseth’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday. The Old Game, which could also be defined as the “politics of personal destruction” in the verbiage of one Hillary Clinton, who had a lot of nerve decrying it when it was literally her political stock in trade, is what you play when you can’t win a real, substantial political argument with somebody. Instead, you attack them on “character” issues as a means of distracting from the substance of the argument. They played the Old Game against Hegseth. In previous year,s it would have been a no-brainer of a way to stop his confirmation. Sex sells, of course, and Hegseth spent his younger years (and some of his middle-aged years) as a bit of a philanderer. He busted up a pair of marriages because he had trouble turning down the strange, and he has something of a reputation — whether earned or not — as a guy who likes to tie one on from time to time. The idea that a penchant for strong drink is disqualifying from government service in Washington, D.C., is of course quite laughable. That marital fidelity is a non-negotiable standard for public officials at the federal level is also a knee-slapper. The people professing offense at Hegseth’s occasional bouts of moral turpitude have very little room to talk, as Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin pointed out to their faces Tuesday: HILARIOUS! Sen Markwayne Mullen CALLS OUT Senators for Cheating on Their Wives and Showing up to Vote Drunk While Attacking Pete Hegseth for Alleged Affairs and Alcohol Use pic.twitter.com/zimCWJMa5T — Jordan Conradson (@ConradsonJordan) January 14, 2025 Mullin’s riposte to the screeching Democrats who attempted to turn Hegseth’s confirmation hearing into a Chinese Cultural Revolution-style struggle session was the internet’s overwhelming favorite moment of the spectacle, and for a reason: Mullin discussed Hegseth as a man in full, containing flaws but also the spirit and fight America must have in its leaders if we’re to restore the country to its deserved glory, and he pointed out the flaming hypocrisy of those people who would declare Hegseth unworthy of his sought position by applying a standard none of them could ever meet. They made his job easy. Here is the slovenly Tammy Duckworth thundering away at Hegseth from a prepared script and making an ass of herself in the process: Nauseating meltdowns, down to the prepared remarks and sighs that come off like stage cues from Illinois Democrat Senator Tammy Duckworth, arguing he's somehow not emblematic of the Soldier's Creed (unlike her b/c of her own service and war injuries) Disgusting. pic.twitter.com/IGJGLyUw5V — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 14, 2025 Among her bones to pick with Hegseth were that he couldn’t remember offhand the nations of the ASEAN treaty, which she claimed is a military alliance the Defense Secretary must manage. Except ASEAN is an economic alliance, not a military one, and Duckworth, who as RedState’s Bonchie noted came off even dumber than Mazie Hirono, failed to realize that. Which makes her no more qualified to hold the position for which Hegseth has been nominated than he is. Again, the standards these people attempt to impose on a Pete Hegseth aren’t remotely realistic given their own fitness for them, and the American public sees this as plain as day. There is only so much of being ruled by cretins like Joe Biden and Tim Kaine and Elizabeth Warren anyone can stand before none of this stuff works anymore. Particularly when it’s patently obvious none of them want to debate the substance and reality of what Hegseth represents — which is the leaner, more lethal, less corrupt, less woke, and much more efficient killing machine that the U.S. military would become under a bold, innovative, no-nonsense leader not hostage to the corrupt status quo. If the Department of Defense is no longer a laboratory for social experimentation and an ATM machine for grasping government contractors but instead the unchallenged master of geopolitical land, sea, and air that taxpayers are paying for, the power behind their thrones would certainly diminish. And any amount of transparency to these questions and antics would suss this out. Not to the benefit of Jack Reed and Kirstin Gillibrand, I might add. So it’s the Old Game. But it doesn’t fool anybody. Americans are through with woke pieties. So when Hirono offers up her own stupid questions for Hegseth to effortlessly bat away, she’s brutally and accurately satirized on the internet: OK, who made this?? pic.twitter.com/OfCox6IQVm — Community Notes & Violations (@CNviolations) January 14, 2025 That didn’t stop Hirono from asking Pam Bondi, the nominee for attorney general, whether she had ever sexually assaulted anyone. Because when all you have is a hammer… The days of woke cancellations serving as weapons of mass distraction are over. Hegseth’s confirmation process, which at this point is virtually assured of going through to completion, signals this fact quite loudly. The public, even including lots of people who didn’t vote for Trump, is demanding that his nominees be confirmed, and those demands grow louder by the day. And it isn’t because they’re all such charming, charismatic people, though many of them are just that. It’s because they represent an agenda the public wants. They want the swamp drained. They want the budget balanced. They want the border controlled. They want an end to declining life expectancies, poor public health, overweening government, incompetent emergency management, an overextended, poorly led military, a weaponized justice system and a poisonous, propagandistic media that spins lie after lie into their living rooms. And the purveyors of the Old Game, the people who became experts at discrediting their opponents for failing to meet their woke pieties, simply don’t have an answer for these demands. The Republican purveyors of the Old Game at first slowly, and now with breakneck speed, are retreating from its use. The Democrats don’t have much else in their arsenal. And so these hearings will be disastrous for them. What they’ll signify is that everything changed on Nov. 5 of last year. Those changes were overdue, but they’re here. And when real reform hits Washington as a result of Trump’s cabinet being seated and getting to work, the old matrix of sex scandals, petty innuendo, and cancellations simply won’t save the Swamp. It’s a feast for the eyes. More, please. READ MORE from Scott McKay: The Spectacle Ep. 181: Democrat Women Whine for Toxic Femininity at Pete Hegseth’s Confirmation Hearing BlackRock and American Airlines: Is Larry Fink the New Sam Bankman-Fried? Five Quick Things: The Sum of All Frauds in Los Angeles The post Woke Has Gone Broke at the Confirmation Hearings appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.