Nov.03

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Senators to Tuberville: Do You Want to Rock?

Remember those McDonalds signs that listed how many hamburgers the chain had sold? We may need to start up something like that for stories about how angry the other senators are over Sen. Tommy Tuberville's (R-AL) hold on military promotions. Certainly, the number of items that we've seen on that subject numbers in the hundreds, and maybe in the thousands. That said, there is growing evidence that his colleagues, Democratic and Republican, are almost out of patience with "Coach."

As we have noted several times, there are multiple hundreds of promotions being held up by Tuberville, and dealing with them through normal order would take hundreds of days' worth of Senate time. Dealing with a few of the really big ones through normal order is doable, but sends a message to more junior officers ("You're not as important!") while also sending a message to a future obstructionist ("Go ahead and do it! You'll get some PR, and the rest of the Senate will bail you out of any really serious consequences").

That said, the situation in Israel, along with the heart attack suffered by Marine Corps commandant Eric Smith, means that waiting Tuberville out is a luxury that the nation cannot afford. And so yesterday, the Senate confirmed Adm. Lisa Franchetti as chief of naval operations and Gen. David Allvin as Air Force chief of staff. The vote, conducted via normal order, was 95-1 in both cases (with Roger Marshall, R-KS, the holdout; Tuberville voted in favor). This means that all seats among the Joint Chiefs are now filled. Our congratulations, in particular, to Adm. Franchetti, who becomes the first woman to lead the U.S. Navy, a bit more than a century after Loretta Perfectus Walsh became the first woman to serve in the Navy.

So, where do we go from here? Well, to start, let us note that Tuberville's position—that he won't lift the hold until the Pentagon stops paying for women service members to travel for abortion services—has no real foundation. Lawyers from both the Dept. of Defense and Dept. of Justice have ruled that the allowance is legal, and no one, not even the activist groups, has filed a lawsuit to challenge it. The Senate Armed Services Committee has also voted down a motion to suspend the policy.

Still, Tuberville has dug his heels in, as his constituents like what he's doing, and backing down now would cause him to lose face. So, what can his 99 colleagues do? Here are the options:

• Lobby: If the right person or people could be found, then maybe Tuberville can be talked into changing his mind. The problem here is that the right person or people don't seem to exist. He's been presented with a petition signed by over 1,000 family members of active-duty military (remember, the actual military members can't engage in politicking) that says that the block on promotions is doing enormous harm. The Senator dismissed the petition out of hand. He's also been subject to much arm-twisting from his Republican colleagues, including a tag-team effort on Wednesday from Dan Sullivan (AK), Joni Ernst (IA), Todd C. Young (IN) and Lindsey Graham (SC). Tuberville did not budge.
  
  
• Make a Deal: There may be some alternate way to allow the Senator to express his views without harming America's military readiness. However, nobody has come up with anything acceptable to Tuberville. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), for example, offered to hold a vote on the Senate floor about the abortion policy. Tuberville declined, knowing full well he would lose. Sullivan offered to support a hold on Derek Chollet, nominated to serve as undersecretary of defense for policy, since Chollet is a political appointee and the various officer candidates are not. Tuberville wasn't interested.
  
  
• Go Nuclear: When politics-watchers speak of the "nuclear option," it's generally in the context of the Senate filibuster. If that ever comes to pass, what will happen is that a senator will invoke cloture and block a bill, another senator will call a point of order and say that cloture actually requires a bare majority and not 60 votes, and if the point of order receives the support of a majority, then that will set a new precedent. The rules will be changed and the filibuster will be dead.
  
  The same notion could possibly be applied to what Tuberville's doing, but it would be very tricky, would surely require a fair bit of input from Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, and might well end up being a case of using a Bowie knife when a scalpel is more appropriate. Here is the portion of the Senate rules that is in play here:

  No motion to suspend, modify, or amend any rule, or any part thereof, shall be in order, except on one day's notice in writing, specifying precisely the rule or part proposed to be suspended, modified, or amended, and the purpose thereof. Any rule may be suspended without notice by the unanimous consent of the Senate, except as otherwise provided by the rules.

  If a senator tries to call a point of order on Tuberville, it would probably be one proposing that the meaning of "unanimous consent" be changed. But while cloture is limited to a few parts of Senate procedure, namely the consideration of laws and appointees, unanimous consent is all over the place. Changing the meaning of that concept would potentially open up all kinds of Pandora's boxes. It would also take away members' ability to block objectionable nominees. That is a power they are reluctant to give up, since it's a useful tool for them when deployed judiciously. This is not to say that WE believe that senators should be able to do that all by their lonesome; the issue is that the people who have a vote here DO think that senators should be able to do that all by their lonesome.
  
  
• Change the Rules: If the scalpel is wanted, as opposed to the Bowie knife, then the Senate could amend the rules to say something like "For purposes of non-political appointments, unanimous consent is considered to be in effect unless at least three senators object." This would be far less nuclear, but since the rules are set (and amended) by Senate resolution, this change would be filibusterable unless 9 Republicans (and all the Democrats) agreed to the change. Are there 60 votes? Apparently not yet, or Schumer would have held a vote. But it looks like it's getting close.

There's no way to say how long this game of "look at me" will continue. However, it's going to be very difficult for the Senate to leave for its holiday break with the armed forces still twisting in the wind. Meanwhile, the budget fight will afford an opportunity to send some pork Tuberville's way. So maybe the light at the end of the tunnel is about to come into view. (Z)