There is a Senate rule that could conceivably be changed to stop Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) from his blocking of military promotions and filling open military positions, which Tuberville is ostensibly doing to protest the “woke” Pentagon — especially its policy of reimbursing travel expenses of military personnel traveling for abortions.
But with 2024 at hand, the longevity of Tuberville’s block and the Senate’s apparent unwillingness — despite Sen. Chuck Schumer‘s threats — to stop him, takes on new dimensions.
[NOTE: The Senate Rules Committee did vote in November to “approve a resolution that would allow the Senate to confirm groups of the military nominees at once for the remainder of the congressional term.” This temporarily goes around Tuberville to advance certain promotions, but it does not change the rule that allows a single Senator to exert such outsize influence on blocks and holdups.]
Beyond the fact that it’s hard to change a Senate rule, requiring 60 votes to do so, another theory about the reluctance to try to push through a permanent change holds that Tuberville’s main target isn’t just the “woke” military, but all aspects of a military that might contain internal resistance to Donald Trump as commander-in-chief.
If that’s so, goes the notion, then Tuberville intends to keep his block going until at least after the next election, in the hope that a Trump election win would allow Trump to fill the positions with compliant loyalists.
It’s a delay tactic that Republicans used to block Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination by Barack Obama. [NOTE: Garland subsequently becoming the U.S. Attorney General may be a case of be careful what you wish for in GOP lore.]
But if Tuberville’s end game is so blatant, then why haven’t Democrats, who enjoy the slimmest of majorities in the Senate, changed the rule to stop him? One answer is because they might need that rule in place if Trump does win back the presidency — on the idea that two can play the block game.
Stripping Tuberville of that power now would strip, say, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) of that same power down the road, perhaps during a second Trump term. The Dems don’t want to cut off their nose to spite their face, as the saying goes.
Graeme Edgeler phrases it succinctly in answer to NPR’s Steve Inskeep in the tweet below.
How would Donald Trump fill them? Is there not a single Democrat in the Senate who would seek to use the power Tuberville is currently using if a future Pres. Trump sought to appoint cronies to such positions?
— Graeme Edgeler (@GraemeEdgeler) December 5, 2023
