Earlier this month, several Senate Republicans decided they’d seen enough of Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s unprecedented blockade on confirming U.S. military leaders. In fact, these GOP members publicly accused the Alabama Republican of, among other things, being dishonest, damaging the military during international crises, assisting U.S. adversaries abroad, and relying on tactics that are “ridiculous” and “dumb.”
If the goal was to encourage the far-right senator to be more responsible, those efforts have apparently fallen short. HuffPost reported overnight:
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) is coming under fire after he insulted the U.S. military on Monday evening. “We’ve got the weakest military that we’ve had in your or my lifetime,” he told Newsmax’s Eric Bolling as he complained about diversity initiatives. “Infiltrating our military is all this wokeness.”
There was, of course, a degree of irony to the circumstances: The politician responsible for weakening the military whined on national television about the military being weak.
Soon after, former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said Tuberville isn’t just wrong; he’s “an idiot.”
Putting questions about the Alabaman’s intellect aside, I’m struck by the broader shift in Tuberville’s tactics. Following up on our earlier coverage, the senator’s original position was indefensible, but it was at least consistent. In the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise, the Pentagon created a travel-reimbursement policy for servicemembers who needed to travel for reproductive health care.
The Alabama Republican insisted that the policy is “illegal” (it’s not), and further argued that the Defense Department was paying for abortions (which was also untrue). The result was a radical tactic: For the first time in American history, a senator imposed a blanket hold that made it effectively impossible for the Senate to confirm U.S. military promotions in large numbers.
The right-wing…
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