Alabama insurrectionist Tommy Tuberville gets all the blame for blocking all Pentagon promotions, but he’s just the frontman for a small group of Hate America Senate Republicans— extreme right-wing Kremlin allies Mike Lee (UT), Josh Hawley (MO), JD Vance (OH), Rick Scott (FL) and Roger Marshall (KS). Tuberville and his 5 co-conspirators have put the country in danger and few people are taking it seriously. Tuesday, the Rules Committee voted 9-7 in favor of a Democratic resolution that would break the Russo-Republicans’ months long hold that has put the Pentagon and military families in turmoil. Every Republican—including McConnell, who talks out of both sides of his mouth when it comes to Tuberville— voted against it. At least 9 Republicans would have to vote for the proposal on the floor and without McConnell’s support, that’s not going to happen.
The Democratic proposal would allow the Senate to confirm hundreds of Tuberville’s blocked promotions in one shot, temporarily changing a rule that few senators want to see disappear. Schumer is now reduced to bringing the resolution to the floor with no GOP support. Maybe a few will vote with the Democrats, but not 9. McConnell claims, implausibly, that he wants to see if Republicans can persuade Tuberville to change his mind. Tuberville has been very clear that that isn’t going to happen. But McConnell is cowed by the half dozen extremists. Even Lindsey Graham, worried that officers are going to quit the military, said “I don't say that lightly, I've been trying to work with you for nine months.”
This is more of Trump’s demands of his allies to create an atmosphere of chaos and dysfunction to encourage voters to believe we need a “strongman.” Yesterday, Alexander Bolton reported that “Tensions within the Senate GOP over Tuberville’s controversial strategy of blocking nonpolitical military nominees to protest the Pentagon’s abortion policy spilled into the open earlier this month when a group of Republican senators confronted the Alabama senator on the floor… [Rick] Scott, who challenged McConnell for the Senate Republican leader’s job a year ago, last week warned it would be a ‘mistake’ for Senate Republican leaders to back the resolution.”
“I support Tommy,” Scott told The Hill last week. “We ought to respect that a person has a different position, and actually I support his position. I think what the Biden administration did with regard to the abortion policy is not in compliance with the law.”
Hawley warned Tuesday that depriving Tuberville of the power to withhold unanimous consent to speed military nominees through the Senate would set a bad precedent.
“I’ll vote against it if and when it comes to the floor just because, putting aside the present the situation, I just don’t think— listen, the right to object to unanimous consent is important,” Hawley argued.
“When you start chipping away at that, the problem I think is that that becomes a precedent,” he warned. “If you’re going to do it for this, why not do it for this, that and the other thing?
“I think it will be very tempting for future majorities to want to do this across the board. If that’s the case, we ought to just rewrite the rules… which I would not support either.”
Hawley’s opponent, Lucas Kunce, a 13 year Marine veteran, was unwilling to let him slide by with this stunt. “Josh Hawley,” he said, “wants us all to forget he's just as full of shit as Tommy Tuberville. You know what's a ‘bad precedent’ Josh? Sabotaging our national security. ‘America First’ is nothing more than a soundbite to these guys.”
Kunce’s campaign noted that Like Tuberville, Josh Hawley has a history of using his office to pull the same kind of anti-military stunts. Earlier this year, Roll Call reported how ‘Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley was booted from his perch on the powerful Armed Services Committee last month as retribution for delaying the confirmation of numerous Defense Department nominees last year.’ And Kunce has written about how these insane stunts are impacting day-to-day operations of our military and wider national security apparatus: “Sen. Tuberville is putting that exact kind of unnecessary strain on the United States military. There’s the immediate strain, but there’s also a more insidious damage that will continue hindering our military longer after this stunt is over… Every person that isn’t promoted to replace a retiring officer stretches the military thinner. It means more and more officers having to perform multiple critical jobs at once. Dozens, if not hundreds, of military officers are going to have to explain why the U.S. is sending significantly lower ranks than their counterparts to critical meetings and negotiations around the globe.”
It’s worth reading Kunce’s whole detailed Veteran’s Day tweet, skewering Tuberville. I’ve taken a bit of it. “It’s that time of year again. When a bunch of politicians drape themselves in the American flag and praise those of us who’ve served this great country. And then most of us veterans roll our eyes at their pandering, share their cringiest messages in our group chats, and enjoy a free entree at Applebee’s (thanks corporate America). This isn’t a new phenomenon. Politicians, most of whom have never worn the uniform, have always used Veterans Day as a patriotic dick-measuring contest— who amongst them can be the most pro-America, America-First, loudest Lee Greenwood cover artist? It’s time we stop letting them get away with it.”
This year, we observe Veterans Day in the midst of Tommy Tuberville– and his allies and enablers in the Senate– spending MONTHS blocking hundreds of key military nominations and kneecapping our national security apparatus. All because they’re obsessed with the completely separate issue of abortion. It’s crazy to think that a man like Tuberville is going to wish us all a ‘Happy Veterans Day’ when he’s betrayed our country, screwed over military families, and undermined America’s position as our enemies salivate.
Sen. Tuberville’s stunt is merely the latest in a long line of anti-American actions by self-proclaimed patriotic politicians. Just last year, over 40 Senators initially voted against the PACT Act. A bill that was supposed to help troops exposed to burn pits overseas (and as someone who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I can assure you many of us were exposed). They came up with their excuses. But we don’t forget. They’ve been playing politics with us rather than doing the right thing for generations.
You know who does the right thing? The quiet veterans in our communities who these politicians keep screwing over.
…In a room full of Vietnam Vets, I learned service requires sacrifice. That the America they fought for wasn’t just some idea that D.C. politicians debated over in a comfortable room. America for them was the people in their hometowns, their families, friends, and neighbors, the people at Church, the community that raised them– America was real for them, and it was worth the sacrifice they made to serve their country when their know-nothing politicians were making bad decisions that caused them a great deal of pain.
Tommy Tuberville doesn’t understand that. It’s why he’s so comfortable grandstanding. America doesn’t mean jack shit to him. America First has no more meaning to him as a slogan than Got Milk did to Bart Simpson.
I remember how all those Marines talked about their generation of politicians sending them to war and forgetting about them. Breaking our ultimate code: never leave anyone behind.
Politicians have no business saying America First unless they really mean it. They could invest in the communities us veterans signed up to serve, the real America and the real Americans that make this country great. They could get vets the health care we need. They could stop shipping our jobs overseas and start making shit in America again so we don’t have to go to war for energy needs or semiconductor manufacturing. Imagine if on Veterans Day, a bunch of politicians decided that America meant something more to them than the D or R next to their name.
Instead, down at the Marine Corps League, folks will be talking about how Tommy Tuberville left every single Marine behind. He left us without our top officer, the Marine Corps Commandant for months. Now, as that Commandant recovers from a heart attack, there is no one to take his place because Tommy Tuberville blocked the Assistant Commandant’s nomination, too, along with hundreds of other military positions.
I hope Tommy and all of his enablers in the Senate leave their flags at home and enjoy some nice BBQ and R&R for Veterans Day (while over a million vets are on food stamps). It obviously doesn’t mean any more to them than that.