Tuberville (Mostly) Ends Military Promotion Hold
400-plus general and flag officer promotions went through almost instantaneously.
WaPo (“Tommy Tuberville announces end to blanket military holds“):
“It’s been a long fight, we fought hard,” Tuberville said after announcing his decision to his colleagues at a closed-door lunch. “We just released them.”
The hold, which Tuberville began in February, applied to all senior military promotions, and hundreds of officers were caught up in its net. As officers increasingly complained of the toll on military readiness and morale, and as a war raged in the Middle East, Tuberville faced increasing pressure from his fellow Republicans to drop the hold.
He has now narrowed his hold to the 10 or so promotions at the four-star rank. Tuberville said he relinquished the hold because he wanted to keep Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) from bringing up a vote to get around his maneuver. He did not receive any concessions he previously demanded, such as a change to the military funding bill to address the abortion policy.
“We got all we could get,” he told reporters.
Tuberville was left with few options after Schumer put forward a proposal that would allow the Senate to go around Tuberville’s holds, which had the Republican votes necessary to pass.
On Tuesday evening, Schumer confirmed more than 400 stalled promotions on the Senate floor. “I am glad this pointless and gravely damaging ordeal has finally, finally ended,” he said. “The senior senator from Alabama has nothing to show for his 10 months’ delay … except for the damage he did to our military readiness and the pain he caused to military families.”
Tuberville’s hold led to a remarkably public confrontation with some of his GOP colleagues, who staged a late-night attempt to promote the officers he had blocked, forcing him to personally object to each one. Republican Sens. Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Todd C. Young (Ind.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), all veterans, implored Tuberville on the Senate floor to lift his hold for the sake of national security.
“No matter whether you believe it or not, Senator Tuberville, this is doing great damage to our military,” Graham said then. “I don’t say that lightly; I’ve been trying to work with you for nine months.”
Behind closed doors, Republicans have complained that Tuberville’s blockade was hurting them politically as well, given the harm to the military and the focus on abortion, which has been a losing issue at the polls for the GOP in recent elections. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took the rare step of publicly rebuking Tuberville, saying he should not be punishing “military heroes” for a Biden administration policy. Other Republican colleagues said they thought that Tuberville moved the goal posts of his demands, from initially just wanting a vote on the military abortion policy to demanding that it be rescinded altogether to allow promotions to go through.
The Hill (“Biden rips Tuberville after military holds lifted: ‘I hope no one forgets what he did’“):
President Biden on Tuesday ripped Sen. Tommy Tuberville after the Alabama Republican ended a nearly 10-month hold on military nominations, arguing the senator’s actions were “politically motivated” and “pointless.”
“These confirmations are long overdue, and should never have been held up in the first place. Our service members are the backbone of our country and deserve to receive the pay and promotions they have earned,” Biden said in a statement. “In the end, this was all pointless.
“Senator Tuberville, and the Republicans who stood with him, needlessly hurt hundreds of servicemembers and military families and threatened our national security — all to push a partisan agenda. I hope no one forgets what he did,” Biden added. “Those who serve this nation deserve better.”
Biden welcomed the release on the backlog of nominations, saying it would allow military families to make plans to move, start new jobs and send their kids to new schools.
“Our servicemembers and military families put everything on the line for our country,” Biden said. “I thank the Senate for quickly confirming these appointments and urge them to confirm the remaining appointees swiftly.”
While I doubt this will have much, if any impact, on next year’s elections, this was really poorly handled by Tuberville and the Republican leadership. To be sure, it was likely marginally helpful to Tuberville with Alabama voters, but he’s not up for re-election until 2026. But it gave Democrats a hammer to hit Republicans with on defense policy without advancing any policy goals at all.
To the extent this was about policy, Tuberville had something of a point. Given decades of Congressional support for the so-called Hyde Amendment, and the sheer size of this program, Congress, not the Secretary of Defense, should have made the call on funding it. But holding up military promotions—particularly at the one- and two-star level—simply made no sense as a tool for gaining leverage.
Tuberville is an incompetent Senator, and he has also proven himself an incompetent, if not fraudulent businessman. He did one thing well: coach college football, i.e. recruit 16 and 17 year old boys, and then coach them in the bizarre and insular world that is college sports. But he has shown that everything else lies completely beyond his very limited ability or even his understanding.
Nevertheless, the people of Alabama seem very happy with him. In the end the glee they seem to get from calling one of their elected officials “Coach” seems to superseded any desire to get anything worthwhile out of that government official.
And of course, this is a case where “Weak Party” never really entered into it. As I understand it, Republican Party officials pursued Tuberville, yielding a case where those officials and both the primary and general electorate were in agreement. The majority of Alabamians got exactly what they wanted when they elected Tuberville and seem to be happy with him. Unfortunately those that lost the vote have to deal with the consequences too.
One lesson to be learned from Tuberville is that the Senate’s customs and “rules” don’t work when you have bad faith actors in a closely divided body. The story behind the story here is, *who put Tuberville up to this?* He’s too dumb and inexperienced to have conceived it on his own.
@Charley in Cleveland:
Yeah, who is we?
Because the modern GOP doesn’t care about policy. Performative nonsense is the dominant strategy. That makes it easier for legislative incompetents to justify that what they can’t do is what they shouldn’t do.
@MarkedMan:
Copied from my 23 June 2023 post on same subject”
Slightly off topic but every time Tuberville is mentioned I have to bring up what a POS he actually is.
Tommy Tuberville left recruits at dinner to take Cincinnati job
Not only a lousy person but a lousy coach.
Not the same thing when abortion has been outlawed in many states.
@Kathy: As noted many times, I think the DOD policy is right and in line with similar policies outside reproductive health—and across the interagency, for that matter. Austin’s came under more scrutiny because Tuberville is on SASC and because DOD is so massive comparatively, making the policy much more impactful.
@Scott: I’ve never liked Tuberville but he was a highly successful coach for many, many years. He was the most successful coach in Ole Miss history up to that point and did quite well at Auburn until Nick Saban came to town at Alabama. He was pretty lackluster at Texas Tech—which pretty much everyone other than Mike Leach has been—and at Cincinnati, which has typically been a competitive feeder school.
As I pointed out earlier, all it took was the threat that this “power” granted to Senators might be removed by the Senate. He didn’t even want to risk precedent being set. Strange things happen when the government fears a return to the basics of the Constitution.
@JKB: On your primary point, which I take to be “It wouldn’t be bad if the Senate, you know, voted on things” – I agree.
AND, there is nothing unconstitutional about how they do things now. The Constitution specifically grants them the ability to set their own rules. This is how they have chosen to do things, and they seem to want to keep doing things this way.
Which, in the end, amounted to a mountain of bad press and absolutely nothing else.
I despise Tuberville. Sooner he’s out of the Senate, the better.
The Tuberville actions clearly show the power of tantrum. In my youth, I was taught that the US government made decisions after thoughtful considerations; there might be opposing views on issues which were respectfully debated by people who cared for decorum and fairness. Man, was I ever wrong! Trump is angry all the time. I believe that I have seen a headline about Trump’s choler every day since he’s entered politics. Tuberville has taken the same road. Of course, this will not hurt his standing with the electorate; after all, he is a football coach!
What an odious, small minded excuse for a human being. And that’s his good feature.
@Jen:
He’s the consummate horse’s ass, isn’t he?
Honestly, I blame Schumer for letting this toxic charade go on for 10 months. Schumer could have leveraged this result long ago.
We know that Tuberville has an IQ that approximates the room temperature of a meat locker, yet Schumer allowed himself to be played as a hapless and helpless Majority Leader by Tommy. There is no way a leader like Nancy Pelosi would have let this idiocy go on for months.
@al Ameda:
We’ve had that conversation here several times in the last few months. I said it then and I’ll say it again. I like Schumer. He’s pretty effective in normal times. But the times call for a wartime consigliere and he is not that.
@Flat Earth Luddite: Alabama saw that and said “gotta get me some of this”. I guess there was nobody in-state sufficiently awful, which is hard to believe, given their competition with Mississippi.
@Scott:
I agree with you.
He’s a fine senator, but as the Majority Leader in these times he doesn’t take advntage of the few opportunities that he gets. Why did he sit on his hands and let Tommy do this. He could have made everyone uncomfortable by saying, ‘okay everyone, we’re going to go through each one of these promotions one-by-one’ until … etc’ Stay in session for 96 hours if necessary. I’m guessing that more than a few Republicans would have forced Tommy to stop his bullsh*t.
@al Ameda: FWIW, if I remember correctly it’s a lot more complicated than that. I think there was a time period between when he made his for,Al objection and when they could bring it back up. Or something. But I remember hearing from someone in the know that with hundreds of promotions there wasn’t enough hours, days and weeks available to get through them all.
@al Ameda:
I guess I’m not a work time consecutory either. Given the opportunity to let the gqp and the coach keep hanging themselves, I’m more than willing to hang hand them enough rope ( & enough barbed wire to wrap themselves in) to make this an issue neigh onto forever.
Of course I’m also the guy who would make commercial after commercial after commercial hammering the fact that our readiness to defend the nation were solely the responsibility of the GQP and Coach.
But then again I am a Luddite and an adjudged sociopath, unlike most everybody else. Of course this boy wouldn’t actually work, because the QP doesn’t actually care, and the demo rats would be screaming because coach wasn’t punished.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Wartime c-c-con-consigliere…
Curse you I talk you type…
Majority Leader Schumer has set a terrible precedent in using a threat to change the Senate’s rules to blackmail a Coach of Principle! Democrats will have no reason to complain when a future Cotton-led Senate changes dozens of rules to deprive Democrats of power. They will have brought it upon themselves!!! They left Republicans no choice!!!!