Pentagon officials have been frustrated for months over an Alabama senator’s blockade of more than 300 senior military nominations. But after the Marine Corps chief was hospitalized over the weekend, that frustration is turning into rage.
Gen. Eric Smith had been filling both the No. 1 and No. 2 Marine Corps posts from July until he was finally confirmed as commandant in September. He, along with more than 300 other senior officers, was swept up in the promotions blockade put in place by GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville in protest of the Pentagon’s abortion travel policy.
In an interview Wednesday, Tuberville brushed off the comments from the DOD officials.
“They’re looking for someone to blame it on, other than themselves,” he said. “We could have all these people confirmed if they’d have just gone by the Constitution.
“I don’t listen to these people,” he added. “They’re just looking for any possible way to get themselves out of a jam.”
Okay, so, first off, I want to remind everyone that Tuberville is a Christian Nationalist who believes that God sent Trump to save America. He objected to Biden’s win in January 6th, and still says that Trump won.
With that in mind, no matter what happens with the military promotions, Tuberville will always be happy. Right now (and even if he eventually loses), he can claim that he’s owning the libs. He likes that, and he’ll ride that forever - in his mind, this is a good outcome and he’s not going to stop. This is now his signature, defining issue.
Until the next Senate gets sworn in, there are three ways this can go. First off, the Senate caves and Tuberville gets to start pushing his religious ideology onto the US military - huge win for him!
But the other ways it can go (either everything remains blocked, or only a limited number make it past him) also have a less obvious win: he’s holding up promotions. Which seems obvious, but keep in mind that this is the exact same bullshit McConnell did to Obama on federal judges - and that as soon as Trump took office, they took off the brakes and rammed the judges through as fast as they could.
That’s exactly what’s going to happen the next time the Republicans get control of the Senate - they’re going to speed-promote every right-wing officer they see, and slow-walk anyone they’re not sure of.
When the next insurrection comes - and you can be sure that it will - the military is going to have a proto-fascist core.
There is one other thing that could be done…but won’t be.
Qui tacet consentire videtur ubi loqui debuit ac potuit. “He who is silent, when he ought to have spoken and was able to, is taken to agree.”
If they simply decided to adopt a silence gives consent rule for the Senate’s role of advice and consent for all appointments, they would no longer be able to obstruct by simply holding off on things. The senate could still deny consent by voting against a candidate and explicitly not confirming them, but doing nothing would automatically become consent and pass unopposed.
This is what Obama should have done with Merrick Garland, not to mention all those other federal judge appointments. Simply go ‘okay, you’re not voting on it, which means you’re silent, which means you consent. All appointments approved!’
Edit: Although truthfully the idea that the Senate needs to confirm every military promotion is so insanely stupid that I can’t understand how it’s ever become the standard. The only reason Tuberville can do this is because these promotions are usually passed behind the scenes with unanimous consent - he can’t actually block them…he can just make them be voted on. And yet, the volume of promotions means that simply voting on them would take up all of the Senate’s time. The Senate really should only need to confirm the highest levels, not every single promotion in the entire military.
Jfc let me off this ride
They love the troops until they don’t.
They love that saying they love the troops gets them support.
They don’t care about the troops either way
Hint: they never do, they just use them in their campaign ads.
“They’re looking for someone to blame it on, other than themselves,” he said.
The pot calling the kettle black.
Any single senator could do this kind of hold up for anything that goes by unanimous consent.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_hold
The original intent of these sections was to protect a senator’s right to be consulted on legislation that affected the senator’s state or in which a senator had a great interest. The ability to place a hold would allow that senator an opportunity to study the legislation and to reflect on its implications before moving forward with further debate and voting.
Holds, like filibusters, can be defeated through a successful cloture motion. However, the time required to bring around a cloture vote often allows fewer than 40 senators to block unimportant legislation when the majority is not willing to force the vote.
So yes, Senator Tuberville is filibustering, but the real story is that the majority of the senate doesn’t care enough about the military nominations to cloture it.
How is he filibustering? I honestly don’t know how he is able to do this and am trying to learn.
These aren’t even being brought up, right? So, there’s nothing to filibuster.
I just learned about it today. From the wiki, a Senate hold basically means you do not provide your consent to bring the matter before the Senate. Senate has bylaws, saying that all matters brought before the Senate must be unanimously agreed upon to be brought forward. To provide all senators time to be acquainted with the matter, do research, timeliness etc.
So this senator is withholding their consent for this matter to come before the Senate, effectively infinitely delaying it.
The Senate can, with a majority vote, bring the matter to the Senate anyway through the second method, but that requires more coordination and agreement…
So net net, it’s a kind of filibuster, and you can bust it but you need a majority
I believe you need 60, not just a majority.
You only need simple majority to change the rules so that a simple majority can push these nominations through. In fact the republican party did exactly that in 2013 and 2017 and got their judges pushed through.
This was a rule that Republicans put through. You no longer have to actually filibuster. You only need to say that you are filibustering and the Senate just assumes that you did and moves on.
At what point do they admit it’s a national security issue and do something about it?
That’s fascism bro. The reasons for Tuberville’s blocking are shit, but the fact that he can do that is working as intended. If the dems wanted to do something about it, they could act like a real political party for once and remove Tuberville from the armed forces chair, or equivalent that is allowing him to block the nominations.
If you just want “the military” to do “something” about the problematic senator then you are a piece of shit.
- Republicans do a bad thing.
- Democrats don’t stop the Republicans.
- It is the Democrats fault the bad thing is happening.
Fucking top tier logic right there.
Do you not think the dems have the ability to stop the republicans? Because they absolutely do. But rather then use the power they have, they’d rather “play politics.”
Yeah let’s play politics with a party that cheats, try to make a coup, doesn’t respect democracy, force push extremists inside their own party, say extremists are good people.
We should also engage in mediations with Kim Jong Un to tell him he’s not very nice and send a cookie of peace to Putin to melt his heart.
I have no idea why Schumer does that, but apparently if you ask why the democrats don’t use power they have and suggest that they do use the power they have instead, that breaks brains.
You can’t just magically waive a wand and “stop the Republicans.” And Democrats are working to solve this problem but this doesn’t happen overnight. How exactly are the Dems “playing politics?”
But none of that really matters to the point of your bad faith argument, because this problem would immediately go away if Tuberville stopped being an asshat. Pointing at the Democrats for not fixing Republican caused problems is asinine political style victim blaming.
The Senate, like the house, are allowed to set their own rules and even change the rules they have based on a simple majority vote. If Schumer and party wanted to, they could immediately not allow Tuberville to block the confirmations. They could also immediately confirm all pending confirmations and kick all members of the minority party off of all committees. All of this is legal, all of this is within the Democrats power right now just as it was “several months ago.”
As far as how the democrats are playing politics, from the article you linked:
Democrats had previously resisted moving ahead on the nominations to apply political pressure on the Alabama Republican but in the face of the Israel-Hamas war, the war in Ukraine and the hospitalization of a top military commander, they reversed course.
If you are “applying political pressue” you are playing politics, when instead you could literally just do it since they control the senate.
The Democrats, by themselves, can’t bypass the block. Any senator, regardless of which committees they’re on, can put a hold on legislation. It’s called a senatorial hold and it’s difficult to bypass, because while the majority leader can call the vote anyway, the holding senator can just filibuster, which requires a 2/3 majority to break, and then nothing will get done.
The good news is that even other Republican senators are getting tired of his shit:
When we rant and rave about things we don’t understand, we accomplish nothing but to appear foolish.
The filibuster can be ended by a simple majority to change the rules of the filibuster. This 2/3rd bullshit is an excuse people use to cope with why the democrats are a useless party. The filibuster exists because of Senate rules and they absolutely create bills all the time that can’t be filibustered, this could easily be the same. Or maybe they could even use it to pass good legislation like codifying roe v wade, or universal healthcare or something crazy like that.
Have you read this article? Particularly this sentence?
Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the United States Senate allows the Senate to vote to limit debate by invoking cloture on the pending question.
So that rule, rule 22, can be amended by a simple majority of the senate. Additionally any bill/law/resolution/etc can have a “no fillibusters” provision applied to it. As the democrats are the majority party, they have the ability to do those things.
When we rant and rave about things we don’t understand, we accomplish nothing but to appear foolish.
Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the United States Senate allows the Senate to vote to limit debate by invoking cloture on the pending question. In most cases, however, this requires a majority of three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn (60 votes if there is no more than one vacancy),[3]: 15–17 so a minority of senators can block a measure, even if it has the support of a simple majority. In practice, most bills cannot pass the Senate without the support of at least 60 senators.
…but clearly I didn’t know who I was talking with. You obviously know more about politics than anyone here, and since I can never hope to reach your level, I bow down to your experience.
Yes the rules AS CURRENTLY WRITTEN require that. Those rules can also be RE-Written which is exactly what I said to begin with! If you keep reading under the constitutional basis you will see:
Through negative textual implication, the Constitution also gives a simple majority the power to set procedural rules.
Procedural rules such as the above rule, can be rewritten with a simple majority.
In fact not only am I telling you it works that way, it HAS actually worked that way!
Notably, in 2013 and 2017, the Senate used the nuclear option to set a series of precedents that reduced the threshold for cloture on nominations to a simple majority.[5]: 3
That’s fascism bro.
No.
Actually yes. If the military decides to overturn the senate because of “national security” that is fascism.
That is called a military coup.
Oh I guess if the military does something to collapse the government it can’t be Fascism. Good job.
Military overthrowing the government isn’t part of the definition of fascism. It is the definition of a coup d’état.
Fascism is a political ideology not an action.
Sure, a takeover could lead to a fascist government. But it could also lead to a socialist, communist, conservative or monarchy or even liberal government.
other forms of government, such as a dictatorship, democracy, junta-led
authoritarian political
Yea I agree there, fair point. If a military overthrows a government it doesn’t HAVE to lead to fascism. But in this case, where the US military itself is ignoring the US congress, the US could only be described as an overtly fascist government since the veil would be lifted at that point.
Based
The paths of power have many blocks. If I were from Tuberville’s state, I would be looking at how retaliation against Tuberville affects my state. Remember when Christie blocked a highway to a neighboring state, with a pretend maintenance? Oopsie, it was his underlings that did it.
/$
I, for one, support Tommy Tubman in his efforts to destroy the US military. Why the fuck do y’all want any of these nominations to pass?
Tommy even put a marine in the hospital! Based.
I support it too, but I dont’ like cowardly democrats supporting it via inaction. They should be active and vocal in their opposition of the US Military.
