The Senate failed to overcome a Republican filibuster of Chuck Hagel’s confirmation to be Secretary of Defense this afternoon. The vote was 58-40, with Sen. Vitter not voting, Sen. Hatch voting ‘present,’ and Harry Reid changing his vote from ‘yes’ to ‘no’ for procedural reasons. In other words, there were 59 votes to end the filibuster, but 60 were needed. Sen. John McCain, who had previously promised not to support a filibuster, explained to Fox News that he voted against cloture because Hagel called Bush the worst president since Herbert Hoover and he opposed the surge in Iraq.
Supposedly, the Republicans will agree to end the filibuster after the holiday recess, or about ten days from now. Why the wait? Do they just want to make current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta miserable by postponing his return to California for the beginning of his well-earned retirement?
Fred Kaplan says that the Republicans can no longer be trusted with our national security because their leaders have become “shallow, ignorant, and totally unserious.”
Not to sound like a Golden Age nostalgic, but there once was a time when the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee prided themselves on having an understanding of military matters. They disagreed in their conclusions and sometimes their premises. But most of them worked to educate themselves, at least to the point where they could debate the issues, or ask questions of a general without coming off like complete idiots. The sad thing about this new crop of senators—especially on the Republican side—is they don’t even try to learn anything; they don’t care if they look like complete idiots, in part because their core constituents don’t care if they do either.
After Tuesday’s vote, Sen. Levin adjourned the session, saying, “We thank you all, and we look forward to another wonderful year together.” The other senators laughed, but it really wasn’t funny.
Most people won’t know or care that anything weird happened in the Senate this week. But people who actually work on national security issues in this country are feeling pretty shocked at the spectacle the Republicans have put on. The GOP has never been less trusted to safeguard the country’s security or lead its armed forces. Maybe Obama makes them crazy, but they’re doing this to themselves.
Perhaps only the minds of the NRA leadership can understand the twisted shallowness of this. Yes they hate Hagel. Yes it’s a way to stick it to Obama and Yes it’s a way to taint the image of the most popular politician in the US, perhaps future Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
I don’t have to wait to see our allies laughing at McCain and Graham when they visit overseas next, I can hear it today. They have disgraced their roles as Senators.
This is what Harry Reid gets for trying to play nice with those assholes on the filibuster.
That said, this is pretty disgraceful. Whatever you think of Hagel, there’s nothing so glaringly wrong in his background that he should not be easily confirmed. The Senate advises and consents on nominations – they do not tell the president who to nominate.
All this does is make me hate those assholes McCain and Graham more. I also despise Kelly Ayotte a great deal now, because she’s so goddamn clueless and yet thinks she’s hot shit.
It’s just absolutely crazy, and the Villagers won’t point it out. Democrats say X, Republicans say Y, let’s have a debate. Who cares if X is realistic and Y is delusional, not reality-based, and not relevant to the topic at hand?
Kelly Ayotte is a Koch bot. She follows the orders of her overlords.This was clear when her campaign had nothing to do with issues of importance in NH
“Just as Americans in general do not have the habits of deference, so the conservative in America does not have them either. Ultimately he does not defer even to the country’s institutions. If one of these institutions, such as the Supreme Court, makes decisions he detests, he will defame that institution. He is as ready as is the common man to bypass the institutions he ought to defend … The America which Europe fears is the America of the Reaganites. The America once of the Scopes trial; the America of prohibition; the America of ignorant isolationism. The America then of ‘‘better dead than red”; the America of McCarthyism; the America of the last fundamentalists of the 1950s. The America now of the new evangelicals; the America of the Moral Majority; the America of a now ignorant interventionism; the America which can see homosexuals as a conspiracy; feminists as a conspiracy; perhaps even women as a conspiracy.
The America of fear. For it is in fear that the ungoverned and the unfree are doomed to live. And there was this America in control at Detroit. It is time that we reminded ourselves, and said aloud and more often, that it is from these people that nastiness comes. It is time that we pointed out to the neo-conservatives that democracy has never been subverted from the left but always from the right,” – Henry Fairlie
H/t to Sully.
Except in Russia 1917 when the Bolsheviks subverted the fledgling Kerensky government.
Finish the quote, silly:
No democracy has fallen to communism, without an army; many democracies have fallen to fascism, from within. The Reaganites on the floor were exactly those who in Germany gave the Nazis their main strength and who in France collaborated with them and sustained Vichy. If the neo-conservatives cannot sniff danger, surely the rest of us can be alert.
It’s ironic (now there’s an overused word when referring to Wingnut actions) that the modern conservative culture warrior movement was propelled, eventually into power, largely as a reaction against the cultural excesses of the ’60s, and that the argument at the time was that conservatives were all about respect for our country’s institutions.
Now that those institutions – like a majority of Americans – refuse to reflect Wingnuts’ funhouse mirror universe, one of their defining characteristics is their overwhelming contempt for those institutions. Including the POTUS himself.
And what were those cultural exesses of he 1960s exactly?
Orgies, heroin, drum solos, Vietnam.
Right, Vietnam was a cultural excess according to some! Maybe it was more like a war crime? I guess I’m still stuck in the ‘excess’. In comparison, Iraq was cute.
I am so sick and tired of votes losing because they only got 50-ish votes compared to the winning side’s 40-ish votes.
There is something just not right about that.
Thank Harry Reid and his love of tradition.
At a moment like this the man just seems plain stupid. Or untrustworthy.
Wasn’t Carl Levin one of the Dem Senators against filibuster reform? He had some crappy version of it with McGrumpy, right? Wonder what he thinks about it now.
Levin, Boxer, DiFi, Baucus, Leahy, Reid are the cowardice Dems who sabotaged real filibuster reform.
At what point do intelligent plutocrats realize republicans are bad for business (and everything else)? There has to be at least 2 sane millionaires for every Koch-type nutcase…
The plutocrats are sane enough — but they are making so damn much money with Democrats silenced and the GOP running amok that they’d like to keep this golden age forever.
Actually they aren’t that sane.
There are roughly two classes of excessively wealthy: “self-made” and “inherited”. A lot of the former category are part of the latter once you look close enough.
The latter category, which is the vast majority, is about entitlement and are extreme examples of the fundamental attribution error (everything good that happens is thought of as because they are so phenomenal, every bad thing is someone else’s fault). Of course they don’t get that the GOP is bad for them, any more than Romney does. If the GOP is in power they can screw up all they want and still get rich due to connections.
You’d think the former category would have some people smart enough to figure it out. And they do (think Warren Buffet). But they are the minority. The personality traits that lead to great wealth are surprisingly light on intelligence and analytical ability and heavy on aggressiveness, self-confidence, and gaining confidence of others.
Sounds like a majority of Americans. All those fine folks that either support or don’t object to a Presidential “kill list” and drone strikes. Crazy, heartless, and creepy, but sane — from Matt Taibbi:
Really OT but the truly successful and sustaining leaders exhibit assertiveness (not agression), self awareness(over self confidence) and leveraging others as a resource (as opposed yo conning them)
Ruthlessness will only get you so far and if you pile up enough enemies they will eventually eat you. Genuine leadership is the only path to maximum and sustaining wealth.
Obama btw shows almost perfectly most of the key leadship qualities: strategic thought, humility, curiousity and willingness to learn, authenticity, relationships, assertion and influence, sel awareness, etc.
The GOP might looks like idiots, but this was all made possible by Reid and handful of idiot Democrats not being willing to change the rules. This is what we get for the next 4 years.
Next two years. Assuming the Dems hold on to the Senate majority in 2014 – a very big IF – they’ll have another chance to brag about fixing the filibuster then caving.
Something about our political party in negotiations. We really really suck.
How can you lose something you didn’t have in the first place?
Seriously, anyone who holds the GOP in any respect today is not paying attention – and if they are not paying attention they won’t notice this.
Kinda reminds me of one of the great unspoken comebacks in recent political history:
NS Director Rice: “Senator, you are impugning my integrity!”
Senator: “Ms. Rice, with all due respect, based on your testimony today I do not see evidence of any integrity to impugn.”
Round them up and send them to Gitmo. Forever. Fuck those sons of bitches.
All over the (progressive) websites and media I keep seeing people saying something like “it’s time for Reid to revisit the Senate rules like he said would if the Reps broke their promises”. Like the generally reliable Jed Lewison over at Kos: “Wouldn’t it be nice if instead of losing another vote on Tuesday they instead voted to reform the filibuster?”
The universal consensus before the <strikeout>sellout</strikeout> negotitions with McConnell was that that was the one and only chance to change the Senate rules. So what gives? Does Reid really get another shot somehow, now or when the Reps do a real filibuster on Cordray?
Remember when the nuclear option first came up back in 2005?
It wasn’t at the beginning of the session.
Here’s how to look at it.
The House is fully reconstituted every two years. Every member is elected or reelected. It is in no sense a “continuing body,” so it can uncontroversially change its rules at the beginning of each new Congress.
The Senate, however, is different. Two-thirds of its members do not stand for reelection during an election year. For this reason, the presumption is that the rules apply from one Congress to the next, and you need two-thirds of the votes to change the rules.
However, that is not universally accepted. And Harry Reid made clear that he was prepared not to accept it unless McConnell made some concessions, which he did.
Taking things to another level, is to just ignore the rules by overruling the parliamentarian. In 2005, the GOP fired the parliamentarian because they needed a ruling in their favor in order to pressure the Democrats into caving on judges. This is called extreme hardball.
Reid could do it if he wanted to, but it would be significantly more toxic than what he threatened to do in January.
I thought the agreement was not to filibuster appointments – any possible consequences for this? or is that why they were trying to decide if it was filibuster or not?
I think they’ll end up confirming Hagel and he’s not worth the nuclear option anyway. Now its a whole different story if Obama would get the chance to replace a Republican on the Supreme Court, no?
At first, I was supporting Hagel because GOP was overreacting so much, but I have almost reached my point where I don’t care anymore.
And now you’re exactly where the GOP wants you.
They had respect?!!