The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is slamming a fellow Republican in the Senate for waging an unprecedented attempt to change Pentagon abortion policy by holding up hundreds of military nominations and promotions.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville is “paralyzing the Department of Defense.”
“The idea that one man in the Senate can hold this up for months, I understand maybe promotions, but nominations,” McCaul said. He added, “I think that is a national security problem and a national security issue. And I really wish he would reconsider this.”
Tuberville’s move has forced less experienced leaders into top jobs and raised concerns at the Pentagon about military readiness. Defense officials say Tuberville is jeopardizing American national security. Senators in both parties, including Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, also have criticized Tuberville.
How can Tuberville hold up all these nominations, all by himself? I had to look it up. The way Senate rules work, they figure out nomination approvals in committee and then pass them on the floor with votes of “unanimous consent.” By withholding his consent, Tuberville forces all the committee work to be done on the floor of the Senate.
That is to say, he is hijacking the nomination approval process. This process has developed and become institutionalized in the Senate over many decades. Tuberville is hijacking this process for a largely unpopular, far-right political purpose that is, at best, only tangentially related to the services with vacant leadership positions, and that is in no way related to the actual nominations in question.
Ironically, perhaps, the reason this glitch in the Senate rules allows one person to hold up all the nominations for everyone is itself just another institution. Senate “holds” have been around for decades as well. It wasn’t until 2011 the that a bi-partisan group of Senators voted to change the rules to disallow “secret holds.”
So Tuberville is exploiting one Senate institution in order to shut down another Senate institution, just to generate propaganda for his federally mandated forced-birth agenda.
It’s like an echo of Gingrich in the '90s: It’s like he’s saying, “The interests of the people who elected me are more righteous than the interests of the people who elected all the rest of you all, so there will be no compromise from me on anything. We will run things my way or I’ll use my position to shut it all down.”
The only difference is that Gingrich shut down all the post offices for a few weeks. This asshole Tuberville is trying to shut down our military.
EDIT:
Maybe this could be McConnell’s saving-grace swan song, before he gives up his GOP leadership position in the Senate. As the leader of Tuberville’s party, I’m pretty sure rules allow him to end the hold that Tuberville requested.
Doing so would go against precedent and it would go against the spirit of the institution. But Mitch McConnell is no stranger to going against precedent and disregarding institutions when he thinks it serves his purpose.
It wouldn’t earn him much forgiveness from people like me, but it would make him look a little better on his way out.