Liz Cheney recently lamented that “we’re electing idiots.” Examples abound, but I’d start with Tommy Tuberville.
The voters of Alabama – being Alabamans – decided that it would be a swell idea to send, to the United States Senate, a guy whose sole experience in the realm of decision-making was telling college jocks that they should pass the pigskin on third and 10.
This is a guy whose knowledge of policy begins and ends with “we’ve got to put Jesus and God before everything else.” This is a guy who said on the campaign trail that our three branches of government are “the House, the Senate, and the executive.” This is a guy who thinks that World War II was a fight between “freedom and socialism,” somehow not knowing that the Nazis (whom we were fighting) jailed and murdered millions of German and Soviet socialists. This is a guy who, when reminded on CNN last night that white nationalists are racists, promptly replied: “Well, that’s your opinion.” This is a guy who’d lose an IQ contest to a bag of hammers.
And this is a guy whose closest ties to the U.S. military was coaching the Cincinnati Bearcats in the 2014 the Military Bowl. That factoid is relevant, given the havoc that Coach is currently wreaking within the military. As a servant of Jesus, he dislikes the Pentagon’s policy of covering the travel costs of female personnel who often must trek great distances for abortions or other reproductive health procedures. So he decided, back in the spring, as a form of protest, that he would flex his senatorial muscle and put a procedural “hold” on the normally routine promotions of roughly 200 senior civilian and uniformed military leaders.
Thanks to Coach, they’re still in limbo. And as of today, thanks to him, the U.S. Marine Corps is officially leaderless at the top. For the first time in 164 years, it does not have a Senate-confirmed commandant.
There once was a time when Republicans – particularly southern Republicans – would more likely slice off their own fingers rather than be perceived as anti-military. But why care about military readiness for a real war when it’s so tempting to fight the culture war?
The Pentagon doesn’t pay for military personnel’s abortions. It’s paying the travel expenses for those who’d pay for their own abortions. As the Pentagon explained when the policy was announced back in February, “Our service members and their families do not control where they are stationed, and due to the nature of military service, are frequently required to travel or move to meet operational requirements. The efforts taken by the Department today will…ensure service members are able to access non-covered reproductive health care regardless of where they are stationed.”
That sounds reasonable, unless you’re a dope who’d prefer to keep the Marine Corps leaderless at the top. With as many as 600 senior officers slated for normally routine Senate confirmation by year’s end.
Tuberville’s stunt is so stupid that even right-wing commentator Hugh Hewitt calls it “absolutely terrible.” Yesterday he tweeted that Tuberville “is punishing the entire military with this stunt. It feels like he’s being stubborn, destructive and embarrassed, he didn’t know what he was doing.” Heck, even Tuberville’s brother is fed up. He posted this on Facebook: “Please don’t confuse my brother with me. Thanks, Charles Tuberville.”
It’s a longstanding Senate rule that any member can put a procedural “hold” on any nominee. There’s scant support for a rule change. Normally, military promotions are bundled by the hundreds and routinely confirmed via one voice vote. In theory, senators could do an end-run around Coach by voting to confirm each military leader, one by one, but that process would take months.
This past weekend, Tuberville surfaced on Twitter to address the issue…oh wait, no he didn’t: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, And He shall stand at last on the earth.”
People who actually know stuff are very pissed off. Seven former Defense secretaries – including three who served Republican presidents – have denounced him. In a public letter, they said that Coach is messing with the lives of the 200 military leaders whose promotions he has consigned to limbo: “There are real-world impacts on the families of these senior officers. Most cannot move and resettle their families; their children cannot enroll at their next schools on time; and spouses cannot start new jobs at the next duty station. We can think of few things as irresponsible and uncaring as harming the families of those who serve our nation in uniform.”
They pointed out that Coach is tackling the military for big losses on a number of fronts: the promotions currently awaiting Senate confirmation include new commanders for the U.S. 5th Fleet in the Middle East and U.S. 7th Fleet in the Pacific; a new U.S. military representative to the NATO Military Committee; the next director of intelligence at U.S. Cyber Command; and, later this year (if Coach is still doing his shtick), a new chairman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the words of the former Defense secretaries, “Leaving these and many other senior positions in doubt at a time of enormous geopolitical uncertainty sends the wrong message to our adversaries and could weaken our deterrence.”
On CNN last night, Tuberville was defiant: “Those Secretary of Defenses were nominees. They weren’t elected. I was elected, to represent the people of Alabama, in this country.”
Here’s a reminder that the people of Alabama, in their wisdom, chose Tuberville in the 2020 race, rather than stick with their previous senator, Doug Jones, a former gutsy prosecutor who had beaten the Ku Klux Klan in court.
So maybe it’s too facile to simply say that “we elect idiots.” All too often, the people are woefully complicit – and in this case, it’s weakening our nation. Call it a confederacy of dunces.