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McConnell, Collins, Murkowski
These three Senators are the three Republicans who voted against Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense. Know it or not, they (and others like them) are the reason we have Trump as president. Trump would never be president without them. He probably would never have run. But the spinelessness on display last night has been emblematic of large swathes of the Republican Party for decades. They campaign as rock-ribbed, fire-and-brimstone conservatives … but once in office, it’s all nuance and compromise and work across the aisle. And on almost every issue, Republican voters get something they didn’t vote for, while Democrats – with the assistance of these squishy Republicans – go from success to success.
Eventually, voters had enough. And they didn’t just go looking for a sturdier kind of Republican; they went looking for a bare-knuckle brawler… someone who’d emerge from the scrum laughing with blood on his teeth… Trump.
Published in General
Spot on! I like it because even many of the slow-brained can understand a short and clear explanation, accompanied by a current high-powered example, of how and why we got here.
For perspective, …
It looked like another Act in the usual Senate theatre. The terrible three surely acted to a pre-determined script. Collins and Murkowski’s statements seemed written by the same person. Tillis used his bit part to get something. As you say – they are weasels of the worst sort.
When McConnell was handing Trump a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court he was loved, wasn’t he?
This is one of those times when voters display their cognitive dissonance. They say they want government to adhere to its founding constitutional principles – which in this case means the Congress acting as a co-equal branch of government and the Senate taking their advice and consent role seriously – but yet yearn for a rubber stamp parliament where the president has the power to withdraw the whip.
In 1774, Edmund Burke, a member of the British parliament and now seen as one of the founders of the conservative movement on both sides of the Atlantic, said this, “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays you instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
Pete Hegseth, or someone who shares his views, is exactly what the Pentagon needs. I wish him great success. If he has it, not many will remember the circumstances of his confirmation.
But speaking of those circumstances, it is notable that it is not the first time a Marine Corps enlisted (JD Vance) bailed out an Army Major (Hegseth) in trouble.
SecDef Hegseth is confirmed as Vice President J.D. Vance makes the tie-breaking vote …
Asked about the gOp dissenters President Trump said:
Vice President J.D. Vance provided the winning vote in the tie-breaker:
“I thought I was done voting in the Senate.”
Mitch’s press release on January 21, 2021 =
“Today, we’re considering Retired General Lloyd Austin, President Biden’s nominee to serve as Secretary of Defense.
“Yesterday, I voted to approve the waiver that would allow him to serve in this post notwithstanding the seven-year cooling-off period after military service. And I’ll be voting in favor of confirmation.
“I’m voting “yes” because the nominee is clearly qualified, and because Presidents should get real latitude to fill their teams with qualified and mainstream people of their choosing.
Mitch is nothing but consistent and principled …. or a total pussie whose personal grudges cloud his ability to competently execute his duties as the (R) US Senator from Kentucky? …
… or just too old and being run by his staff?
I hope those with their political knives out start with Alaska (+13 for Trump in the election) and Kentucky (+31 for Trump in the election. Maine went for Harris by seven points.
Murkowski has been a disgrace for years. And (catty remarks to follow) she looks it. She appears to be vying with Maxine Waters for the worst (best?) instance of RBF in Congress. One she richly deserves. (Second runner up and honorable mention: Nancy Pelosi.)
McConnell has, in the words of Oliver Cromwell, “sat too long here for any good [he] has been doing.” Thank you for your service to the nation. “Let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”
Collins is–I think–slightly more honorable. She did vote for Kavanaugh, and she has stood up in the past to quite a bit of opprobrium for her positions. Apparently she voted “with” Trump 94% of the time during his first term. I don’t know of another Republican who could get elected in Maine, and she has said she’s running again next year (I believe she’s the only Senator up for re-election in a state that was won by Harris.) The GOP needs to keep that seat. Voting for Hegseth would probably have tanked her chances. Frankly, imperfect as she is, I hope the state Republicans don’t get a burr up their behinds and invoke another instance of the “Arizona Strategy,” where they primary Collins, find a dream candidate and a “star,” and repeatedly run someone who doesn’t have a actual snowball’s of making it through.
I always assume these things are worked out in advance, and that Thune knew exactly what was going to happen. Had Hegseth’s nomination been going down, would one of the three have switched their vote? I guess we’ll never know.
Trump held a rally in Anchorage in 2022 and endorsed Murkowski’s opponent. She won anyway. Now, you can rail against Alaska’s ranked choice voting but the bottom line is that Trump made his case to the voters and he lost. Both she and Collins, re-elected in 2022 to 6-year terms are there for the duration of the Trump/Vance administration.
McConnell has relinquished the leadership and Kentucky is not as secure as Trump’s +31 might indicate. They have a very popular Democratic governor in Andy Beshear and if he decides to run for Mitch’s seat he is going to be very formidable. Whoever secures the GOP nomination in the Bluegrass State is going to need the McConnell machine to win. But, please, let us take revenge for a battle that’s actually been won and frag as many allies as we possibly can, because MAGA something or other.
I don’t think McConnell is running for re-election, and he wasn’t expecting much love from Maga anyway. Most victories that Trump had in his first term were delivered by Mitch.
It’s still how and why we have President Trump. What is remarkable that you @ejhill never speak of is the Commie posture maintained 100% by the party calling themselves Democrats.
Collins is up for re-election, and has announced she is going to run, next year, 2026. The GOP needs to hold that seat.
An effort to repeal rank-choice voting in Alaska failed narrowly, but has been restarted as of December. I don’t know if passage would make a difference or not. Murkowski is the only one of the three in office through 2028.
McConnell, who’s roughly the same as Joe Biden, and only four years younger than Trump, sometimes appears–like Biden and unlike Trump–to have one foot in the grave and the other on a bar of soap. He has not yet announced whether he will run in 2026, but–like you, I presume–I hope the GOP has an intelligent strategy for moving forward and retaining the seat.
Hey, I think term limits are a great idea. They would eliminate many of these problems and these arguments. Sure, they might cause some problems, but at least they would be new problems, and not the same ones, with the same people, over and over again for decade after decade…
I don’t obsess over it the way MAGA does because at times such as this it’s an absolute irrelevancy.
The Democrats’ position is helpful only during the campaign. Trump won when his opponents (Hillary and Harris) were considered leftwing nut jobs, and lost when his opponent was perceived as mainline centrist (Biden.)
But when elections are over then you have to govern. And that means dealing with the realities of your caucus – and that includes dealing with their wants, needs and, yes, their egos. And if you think it’s productive to piss off the people you’re going to need for the foreseeable future, then God bless you, because you’re going to need it. The 77M votes Trump got in November don’t mean jack compared to the 269 votes he needs on the Hill (218 in the House and 51 in the Senate.)
This is also where Trump’s obsession with personal loyalty becomes a liability. If there comes a time when he (and you) really, really, really need Murkowski’s vote, what’s he going to say? “You know I’ll campaign against you.” To which she’ll reply, “You tried that Mr. President, how’d that work out for you?” As a said before, Murkowski is there for the duration (thanks for the Collins correction @she) and Mitch and his loyalists hold sway in Kentucky.
So, if you want this president to fail, please do continue to consume your own stash of MAGA-high inducing drugs, and remain in campaign mode and not governing mode.
Didn’t I just read in the comments here that when Trump was asked about McConnell voting no on Hegseth, he replied something to the effect, hey, we won. With no criticism of McConnell.
Trump’s response to these three voting no to Hegseth has been relatively benign by Trump standards ….
…. And Trump needing Collins, Murkowski, and McConnell in the future cuts both ways of course.
Maybe Trump learned more than is being recognized.
Well, I hope Trump has learned something. Now here’s hoping his peanut gallery has. Although judging by the more popular MAGA X accounts, it doesn’t look like it.
Just looking to a different paymaster now.
Yes, and this seems to be coming out of left field. What happened to Cocaine Mitch the murder turtle? He gave leeway to Biden forming his cabinet, but not Trump?
What about Sen. Thune, as the Majority Leader, applying pressure? I imagine he might be able to accomplish more with McConnell than Trump, as they know each other pretty well. As for Murkowski, there are committee assignments and other carrots and sticks.
Well, I’m going to question their judgement. Susan Collins is a Blue State senator. Like Mark Kirk in the Pritzker Democratic Republic of Illinois, you couldn’t expect rock-ribbed conservatism. So she gets a pass.
Lisa Murkowski makes my skin crawl. She’s a nepotism candidate appointed by her dad who seems so out of line for the rest of the state. She doesn’t seem to have any real consistent principles besides ticking off the rest of her party. I think Sen. Thune should have a conversation with her on this.
McConnell’s take on this does not make sense and comes out of nowhere.
Hmm, I guess I’d like to see the recent campaign ads for Susan Collins where she portrays herself as a rock-ribbed, fire-and-brimstone conservative. I expect that if she had campaigned that way, she would have lost. This is Maine we’re talking about, not Alabama. A Chip Roy-type, hardcore conservative would be unelectable in a statewide race in Maine.
I like Pete Hegseth and he may be exactly what the Pentagon needs, but in all honesty, I could understand why the Senate would have real questions about him. One could reasonably make the case that Mr. Hegseth is not qualified and he is certainly not mainstream. I really wish in this case that his public Senate hearing had been serious instead of partisan theater. I would have liked to hear him asked serious questions to which he gave serious answers without agendas being pushed on either side. I suspect that was the case when the cameras weren’t rolling, so I am satisfied that he was vetted properly, but I would have liked to hear it.
But he was confirmed. And one of Trump’s strengths is that he will fire him if he is not right for the job. I agree though with the premise of this OP about why Trump was elected. I absolutely do not think that means Republicans don’t have to do their jobs and just agree with whatever Trump wants or that they don’t have to work with the Democrats. They do. But what they can learn from Trump is to have the strength of their convictions and not capitulate every position of strength because they are afraid the press will be mean to them. In other words, they have to get something big in return for any concessions they make.
And exactly who has the upper hand here? Is Thune going to stop Alaska oil drilling? Or some other economic sanctions?
And would Schumer love to entice her across the aisle?
Deciding not to run again can be liberating for someone like McConnell. He can’t lose the leadership. Do you think he craves committee assignments?
The three votes against are the exact opposite of spineless. The far easier vote would be to confirm. This is arguably true even in Collin’s case. I think in McConnell’s case he was making a statement that candidates should actually be highly qualified. Note he voted to advance the nomination to a final vote and he certainly knew in advance Hegseth would be confirmed.
Lots of competing factors to consider when voting but one factor is Senators are actually supposed to pass judgement on qualifications and fitness of the nominees. Sometimes that conflicts with party loyalty and the deference due to a new president.
IMO: Hegseth is certainly smart enough and says a lot of things about what needs to be done at DOD that I think are true and I agree with. Still he has no experience running a large organization and more importantly no experience appointing the right people to make the needed changes as he can’t do it alone. I don’t even know if he knows good candidates. While I would have given him the benefit of the doubt and voted to confirm, his nomination is a big gamble. Most likely he will fire a few generals and make a few policy changes by decree such as eliminate DEI and limit women in combat roles. Those are all good things but otherwise I think his effectiveness will be limited and hopefully he doesn’t cause harm. Of course, I do hope I’m wrong and he does a great job.
These responses appear to support the premise that I think these Senators hold that they own their positions and the view of the people who elected them matters not.
Well said, Terence.
If an actor can become Governor then eventually President …. and a radio political commentator can become a Congressman then eventually Vice President, it does not seem at all unreasonable that a Ivy league grad, combat veteran, author of multiple books on the issues he will administer could run the Department of Defense.
And that goes back to my initial comment about the Constitution, originalism and cognitive dissonance.
When lefties prattle on about “muh democracy” conservatives love to point out that we are not a democracy, we’re a constitutional republic. And that belief lasts all of two seconds once their representatives start voting their own convictions.
“Consistency,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, “is the hobgoblin of little minds.” But that always struck me as something someone who had no real core beliefs and sought comfort from his own lack of principles.
The bottom line is to take the win, hope SecDef is up to the task and keep your powder dry for the real battles ahead.
McConnell deserves ample criticism for the glaring difference between how he approached Austin’s confirmation versus Hegseth’s. He bent over backwards (i.e. waving the 7-year requirement for ex-military nominees) to rubber stamp the former’s confirmation, while rejecting the latter’s on transparently spurious grounds.
If anyone deserves to be painted with the Cognitive Dissonance brush in regards to their inconsistent approach to the Senate’s advice and consent role, it’s McConnell.
Had the Senate Armed Services committee staged a four-hour hearing in which the thirteen Democrat senators (I single them out because I starting from the proposition that they’re more likely to be skeptical, if not downright antagonistic towards Hegseth) conducted a focused and penetrating interrogation of Hegseth’s understanding of the magnitude of the administrative and logistical challenges ahead, they might have been able to frame an argument that Hegseth was getting in over his head and didn’t really have the managerial experience for the job. That would have been the time, and the place, for such a session.
But they chose not to do that. Among the shrill preenings of Hirono, Gillibrand, and Warren, and the nasty innuendoes from Kaine and Kelly, there wasn’t much substantive said or asked about the meat and potatoes of the job of SecDef. I observe with sadness that it’s probably because those thirteen clowns know very little of what they speak, and their strategy was simply to “Kavanaugh” Hegseth, starting with his acknowledged rather sordid personal history, and extrapolating wildly from there. They thought that’s all they needed to do. They were wrong.
Hegseth handled himself well with the Republican questioners, and largely swatted the Democrat nitwits away as one would an annoying fly at a picnic. (The reason behind Kaine’s attempts to get Hegseth to say some version of, “Yes, Senator, charges of physical abuse against a spouse would be disqualifying for this job” became immediately clear the moment that the sister-in-law’s affidavit was made public a day or two later. Had Hegseth made that statement in the hearing, I imagine Kaine’s next words would have been, “I have here, for the consideration of this committee, an affidavit blablabla….” But even that didn’t work.
Given that Hegseth did perfectly well with his Republican interlocutors, and given the idiocy on display across the aisle, and given the inability of any of the questioners to show Hegseth up as an empty suit, I think it would have been proper for at least two of those voting “no” to have stood behind him.
I do find myself in agreement with whoever it was who suggested that the US should approach Denmark with the idea of trading Greenland for Hawaii. But only if Mazie Hirono goes with it.
I am reminded of John Tower, GHW Bush’s nominee for SecDef in 1989. He eventually failed to win the confirmation vote (the Senate was in Democrat hands at the time, but at least one Republican voted against him). He had all the “right” qualifications, but he lost because of his propensity for drink, and his well-known reputation for chasing skirt.
That’s not enough to sink a nomination anymore. And for the fact that it’s not, and for their many failures in execution over the past several years, the Democrats largely have one of their own to thank.
Bill Clinton.
No, the final outcome was by no means certain when McConnell voted to advance on Thursday. Tom Tillis was still on the fence until some time on Friday, which is why Hegseth scrambled to meet with him for two hours. Only afterwards did it become clear that Tillis had decided in favor, and that McConnell lost in his attempt to tank Hegseth’s nomination.