Would a rational man be angry that the gun that’s going to be used to shoot him isn’t working properly?
Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama has become a polarizing figure on Capitol Hill. He’s something of a pariah now among both major parties and the mainstream media due to his nine-month-long blockade on military promotions.
That is, Tuberville has declared that he won’t vote to approve Joe Biden’s appointments so long as the Pentagon refuses to rescind its policy funding travel for service members to get abortions. So far, he’s already blocked approximately 400 promotions. Some senators say they are so backlogged they wouldn’t have time to start from the beginning even if they got the Alabaman to give in.
Democrats, naturally, have panned Tuberville’s effort, but so have some Republicans. Nikki Haley, the presidential candidate and former UN ambassador, has expressed her disapproval.
“What the Department of Defense did was wrong. They are supposed to go through Congress to change things like that, and they didn’t,” Haley said last week at a town hall in New Hampshire. “Having said that, I do not think you hold military families hostage for something like this. Military families sacrifice enough. Don’t go and hold them out and make them political when they don’t want to do it.”
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), a former Navy SEAL, has said he’s “at a point where I’m going to tear apart (if asked) coach/Senator/non-veteran Tuberville for personally attacking service members who have spent almost 30 years serving our country.”
By contrast, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, whose brothers and father all served in the military, is one Republican who has publicly voiced his support of Tuberville, saying:
No. 1, I think its purpose for clarifying policy that’s really important to our military is factually strong. No. 2, I would say that the current lack of focus of our military is problematic and challenging, something that we should be very concerned with.
Those opposed to Tuberville have tried to work around his ban on approvals. Earlier this month the Senate was able to confirm Admiral Lisa Franchetti as chief of naval operations. And certain lawmakers are floating the possibility of a rule change to allow them to sidestep the blockade.
As NPR reports:
But a small group of senators has introduced a measure that would allow most military promotions to be approved as a group (or “en bloc”) with a simple majority vote.
The measure would need to be approved by the Rules Committee before coming up for a vote in the full Senate, where it would need 60 votes to pass.
The Rules Committee vote will be held on Tuesday afternoon and would move to the Senate floor after.
[Sen. Amy] Klobuchar [D-Minn.] says once the Tuberville issue is handled, she’d love to see a permanent rule change in the next Congress — making sure no one person has the power to do something like this again.
“People have had it,” she says. “And we are ready to go on Tuesday afternoon. I really look forward to it.”
But a question remains: While lawmakers, and certainly those in the Republican caucus, want to support the military, is cooperating with the Biden White House really in the best interests of the country?
Seen from a full panorama, Tuberville’s blockade on promotions, whether he intended it this way or not, is hindering Joe Biden from radically transforming the military. In the same way that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell blocked Obama from getting Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court so that seat could be filled by Donald Trump after the 2016 election, Tuberville is reducing the degree to which the Pentagon is stacked with Yes Men who in a time of turmoil will side with Biden or the Deep State as opposed to the Constitution and the people.
The media is laying the groundwork for making the public believe that Trump will try to become a dictator after the 2024 election. And the narrative of Jan. 6 having been an act of insurrection has been ongoing.
We have already witnessed the Biden administration weaponize the Department of Justice against conservatives — not only the J6ers, for example, but even against parents attending school board meetings.
As we are already familiar, firsthand, with the damage that can be done by a politically weaponized justice system, we can well imagine the destructiveness of a military run by officers with no allegiance to the Constitution.
Ultimately, it’s a matter of tactical practicality for Republicans to support Tuberville’s blockade of Biden’s military appointments. The media, trying to appeal to conservatives’ noble sentiments, may say they’re incensed because he’s hurting military personnel or weakening the nation’s defenses. But that argument would ring less hollow if they were actually trying to appoint people committed to securing the border, for instance.
As it is, what the Left really cares about on this issue is filling the military with anti-constitutionalist Deep Staters. Patriots must do all they can to prevent that from happening.