Jazz and I have a disagreement on this issue.
A couple of weeks ago he wrote a post arguing that Alabama GOP Senator Tommy Tuberville should drop the hold he has placed on all military promotions.
The issue at stake is simple: the Biden Administration has chosen to use Department of Defense funds to fly servicemembers from states that restrict abortions to ones that permit it should they choose to have an abortion. This is direct taxpayer funding of abortions–at significant expense–and that is something to which Tuberville objects.
The hold is not complete or even difficult to get around. All Tuberville is doing is not giving the standard unanimous consent for appointments, meaning that the Senate could still hold votes on the appointments and the promotions could still go forward. Nobody doubts that the votes would succeed and the appointments be made. There is no threat to military readiness necessary; the Democrat majority in the Senate has simply dug in its heels as deeply as Tuberville has.
Senator Tuberville is getting enormous pressure to relent, with a growing backlog of promotions and appointments piling up. Fellow conservatives have joined Democrats in the pressure, noting that Tuberville is mucking up the works in the military to make his stand on abortion.
Yeah, except. The same is true for the Democrats and the Biden Administration. They could either hold the individual votes or drop a policy that is, after all, almost entirely made for political reasons. For decades there was a formal agreement between liberals and conservatives to avoid direct federal funding for abortion (the Hyde Amendment is an example), and the Biden Administration is shoving its support for abortion in the face of conservatives and making them pay for it.
This is a new policy. It is controversial. Republicans have every right to oppose it and use means beyond whining.
Democrats always win these arguments because they are willing to do whatever it takes to win–each government shutdown that has been blamed on Republicans is just as much the Democrats’ fault, for instance. Everybody just expects Republicans to cave to political pressure, while understanding that Democrats almost never do.
That is no reason to cave. That is the reason why we always lose these battles. In a game of chicken–which this is–both are playing. Blaming only one side for it is ridiculous.
Obviously, I would love for Biden and the Democrats to cave, but I doubt they will. On the other hand, I applaud Tuberville for taking a stand and imposing pain on the Democrats. Everybody who argues that Tuberville should just cave is also arguing that Democrats should always get their way. Why shouldn’t the Democrats–who picked this fight–be responsible for caving? Why are we conceding that Republicans are always the bad guys?
If the Democrats aren’t willing to cave on abortion, they should just hold the votes. It’s not the Republicans’ job to make their job easy. It’s not like Democrats spend a lot of time making life easy for Republicans.
I, for one, want to see much scrappiness from Republicans, not less. If the White House and Senate Democrats really cared about military readiness they would focus less on alphabet ideology and killing babies, and more on ways to ensure that we can effectively kill our enemies.
Jazz summed up his argument thusly:
It’s not that I don’t understand why Tuberville is doing this. He’s protesting the Biden administration’s decision to pay for service members to travel out of state for an abortion if the procedure is banned where they are stationed. Tuberville is strongly pro-life and he probably sees this as the only measure available to him. But the military is under the control of the executive branch, not the legislative, and for better or worse (or much, much worse), Joe Biden is the Commander-in-Chief. Legislative approval of promotions is largely just a formality.
Also, Tuberville’s actions are both ineffective and destructive. Blocking promotions isn’t blocking any military women from traveling out of state to get an abortion. And the only people he is punishing are the service members who are awaiting promotions and new deployment assignments. From the political angle, the Senator is making himself and perhaps by association the GOP less popular with the military. And that’s a small but generally strongly conservative voting block.
Other solutions to the stalemate have been offered, but nobody seems interested in pursuing them. The White House could change the policy slightly to approve paying for travel for “generic OB-GYN medical services” and take the dreaded word “abortion” out of the mix. But the Biden administration apparently doesn’t want to do that because they would rather “own the cons” and shove this in their faces.
Either way, the only people being hurt by this blockade are the men and women in uniform who are losing out on additional pay and career advancement opportunities. Tuberville needs to put an end to this and let the military get back to doing what they do best.
Well, why should we help Biden “own the cons?”
Scoop: Sinema wades into Pentagon abortion standoff, calling on both Biden admin and Tuberville to “step off a little bit from their positions” and find a “middle ground.”
Her view contradicts WH & DOD.
Per recording @NBCNews obtained.
w/ @akarl_smith:https://t.co/4CJd4Pn64Y
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) August 17, 2023
I think there may be some truth to Jazz’s practical argument, but I would like to see some evidence that it is true and that the effects will be long-standing. I think the connection he draws between this hold and recruiting goals is specious, though, because recruiting is down due to Biden’s turning the military into a social experiment, not because enlisted folks are worried that their officers may not get a promotion promptly.
I am tired of Republicans simply giving in because Democrats are better at this than we are. They know how to create political pain for Republicans. They need a taste of their own medicine.
Now I worry Jazz will give me a taste of my own.
Read the full article here
