Dem
51
GOP
49
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) announced yesterday that he would lift his hold on all military promotions of three-star and lower rank. The Senators did not want to give him a chance to change his mind, it would seem, because as soon as he backed down, Tuberville's colleagues approved 400+ promotions. They will do the rest through normal order.
When Tuberville signaled his imminent surrender last week, all the while implying he had a "plan" for doing so, we wrote:
It is hard to imagine what Tuberville's "plan" might be, besides "surrender." That is to say, there's no clever or tricky way that we can think of to say "I'm not going to block the promotions anymore" other than to say "I'm not going to block the promotions anymore." He may come up with some sort of political theater, so he can save face, and pretend that he was the one in control the whole time.
We were right, in the sense that he did surrender. He had a week to think about it, and didn't even come up with a way to save face, other than to say that he's going to bring an end to the situation (which he created), rather than allowing those persnickety, tradition-hating Democrats to do so. Unsaid in Tuberville's bellyaching is that at least 10 (and probably more like 25) of his fellow Republicans were prepared to join the Democrats in cutting Tuberville off at the knees.
Anyhow, now that it appears to be over, here is an exhaustive list of all the valuable things that were accomplished with this promotion blockade:
We hope you appreciate how much hard work went into compiling that.
Tuberville, for his part, said:
We saw some success. We didn't get as much out of it as we wanted. The only opportunity you got to get people on the left up here to listen to you in the minority is to put a hold on something. I think we opened their eyes a little bit. We didn't get the win that we wanted. We still got a bad policy.
First, note the use of the royal "we." Second, exactly what does it mean that he opened the Democrats "eyes a little bit"? Does he really believe that ANY Senate Democrat is going to think about this for even half a second the next time they have to cast a vote on something abortion-related? Our sneaking suspicion is that they give 99.999999% of their attention to polling on abortion access, and to their own consciences, while reserving some tiny fraction of the remainder to temper tantrums thrown by Alabama senators.
Indeed, one of the more conservative-leaning Democrats, and one from a purple state, did a pretty good job of speaking for his caucus. After Tuberville made his announcement, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), sent out this statement: "About damn time." (Z)