Tommy Tuberville, the moron senator from Alabama, has been holding up hundreds of military promotions for months. This weekend the commandant of the Marine Corps collapsed after suffering a heart attack, which leaves the Corps leaderless since Tuberville has blocked the confirmation of Lt. Gen. Christopher Mahoney as assistant commandant. So now we have this:
On Tuesday, Tuberville began circulating a petition, which would need signatures from at least 16 senators, to force the chamber to consider the nomination of Mahoney....That maneuver is the same one that lawmakers used in September to vote to install Gen. Charles Brown Jr as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
wtaf? Tuberville is now trying to force a confirmation vote for a man whose confirmation he's blocking?
This whole affair is crackers. It's preposterous that a single senator can hold up nominations on a whim, and in any sane world the Senate would ditch this rule. But they won't. Why? Because every single one of them wants to retain this power in case they themselves want to use it someday. Idiots.
I assume "Coach" Tuberville is too stupid to know that he's blocking the nomination he's petitioning to force a vote on.
That is the height of absurdity.
But if Tuberville is able to force a vote on one nominee by getting signatures of 16 senators, what's to stop any other senator from forcing votes on the hundreds of other nominees by getting signatures of 16 senators?
If there's a rule, and then a way around the rule, why aren't Democrats using the same way around the rule?
I think this way it requires some time to debate each one of them, while if they do it unanimously they can do them all without any debate.
This. I think there are over 300 nominations that Tuberville is holding up. They could each be done individually,but it would take a lot of time--votes debates, more votes.
As I understand it, the main problem with getting around the rule this way is that every nomination would have to be considered individually. The way it is handled in Normal Times is that officers that are being promoted to the lower ranks requiring Senate confirmation (Major/Lt Commander and above) are handled en masse, and only the very uppermost promotions are treated on an individual basis.
Handling every promotion individually would leave the Senate with no time for anything else.
Right. Because the Senate is busy doing lots of other stuff right now?
raising money
As I understand it, the main problem with getting around the rule this way is that every nomination would have to be considered individually.
This isn't required by the constitution, though, and could be changed by legislation. The US requires confirmation votes on an absurdly high percentage of government officials, compared to other countries. Mind you, with one of our two parties utterly batshit crazy, it's not a power I'd casually give up (Republicans are bound to win back the White House one of these days!). But the system writ large isn't a good one.
The Senate is an antique and needs to be sold at auction.
I haven't actually taken the time to look into this, but what is the rule that allows him to do this? Is it based on some specific committee he's on?
My understanding is that Senate rules require nominations to be dealt with individually. That’s to prevent the packaging of unpopular/unacceptable nominations together with popular/acceptable ones and forcing an up or down vote on the whole package. BUT, a rule can be suspended by “unanimous consent.” Tuberville refuses to consent to the suspension of the rule.
It’s not clear to me that the rule is a bad one. What’s bad is that in the past, individual senators behaved themselves better (I said “better,” not “well”) and didn’t muck up the entire works for months on end. Tuberville is just an asshole.
It's an idiotic rule. Managing military promotions should be the least political act.
If they still want some control on the action, but not be crippled by an armchair soldier like loser Tommy, then they should modify it to say it takes 10 senators to block....or whatever number. The power still exists, but you need to find more morons.
A partial solution is to make most military appointments NOT subject to Senate confirmations. Flag rank maybe, but some of the lower higher ranks, why?
Managing military promotions should be the least political act.
I'm deeply sympathetic to this viewpoint. But on the other hand, what if Trump wins next year: would you want the Senate to possess no means of preventing, say, Michael Flynn from being appointed to a senior Pentagon post?
It's an idiotic rule.
It's an idiotic constitution: it goes way beyond a rule or two. The craptasticness of Madisonianism is the elephant in the room few are willing to acknowledge.
True, but as I recall, most of the undemocratic compromises were to passify the southern slave states.
* 3/5 rule
* Senate, with equal representation by state
* electoral college
They all give outsized representation fo states with small (then white) populations. And now, thanks to this baked in overrepresentation and Republican nihilism, we have been unable to make 21st century changes!
Does that answer your question? Seems like Tuberville panicked, realizing he may have contributed to the top Marines' heart attack. Tuberville is challenging other GOP for the title of the most reviled member of the Senate.
Good points. And speaking of which, I haven't heard much about "Carnival" Cruz lately...
The world’s greatest deliberative body reduced to the level of angry toddlers playing with their own caca. Thanks Mitch. thanks Donald. Still , it’s better than the Republican run House.
"Tuberville is now trying to force a confirmation vote for a man whose confirmation he's blocking?"
Captures the tenor of our times in a sentence, doen't it?
I am absolutely certain this dingbat's brain is physiologically incapable of making the connection between anything he does, and in particular anything he does that he thinks makes him look terrific, and anything that actually happens anywhere outside the room he's standing in.
It's true that the time it would take to vote individually is an issue.
But voice voting on a larger bloc avoids the politicizing question of the Senate needing to decide on an individual's qualifications. That would open the floor to witnesses testifying about this or that action the nominee took or didn't take, does he or she have enemies who might whisper in some staffer's ear, etc. Lots of grandstanding opportunities.
That is altogether a bad way to choose your generals. A ratifying voice vote on 300 at once says "we have a professional military (mostly) outside of politics. Let's keep it that way."
Never elect a coach.
What have we had recently? Dennis Hastert who diddled the kids, Jim Jordan who tolerated diddling the kids, and Tommy Tuberville who wouldn't know how to diddle the kids.