The Dumbest Senator

I can’t remember when I first became aware of the Declaration of Independence. Just a guess, but I think it was fifth grade. Ms. Gibson’s class at Southern Hills Elementary School, across the street from my home on SW 74th Street in Oklahoma City, seemed to have spent a lot of time teaching us ten-year-olds about the role of government in our lives.

I remember her class holding class elections each semester. I ran for vice president twice, losing both times. No surprise there. But that was the age when I got the political bug, in 1966, when the Sooner State was experiencing one of its most exciting elections. In Lyndon Johnson’s midterm, following his crushing victory over Barry Goldwater in the ‘64 presidential campaign, the GOP came roaring back. Oklahoma elected its second GOP governor, Dewey Bartlett, who succeeded the first GOP governor, Henry Bellmon. It also elected GOP members of Congress from the formerly Democratic stronghold.

My future boss, John Paul Hammerschmidt, that year, became the first Arkansan elected to the US House since Reconstruction as a Republican. George H. W. Bush was elected to a US House seat from the Houston area, launching his political career. Lots of other famous GOP legislators were elected that year.

Unfortunately, it appears the Harvard-educated Tim Kaine, Virginia’s US Senator, never had a Ms. Gibson as a teacher, or was taught crazy things at Harvard Law School (Oklahoma native and US Senator Elizabeth Warren [D-MA] did teach there at one time, so there’s that, although long after Kaine made his presence known there). Unlike Tim Kaine, I learned this as early as fifth grade (maybe earlier!):

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Only Iran’s theocracy believes that rights come from a Creator God, according to the illustrious US Senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia, home to the author of these words and its second governor, Thomas Jefferson (Tim Kaine was Virginia’s 70th governor). Did I mention that Kaine is a graduate of Harvard Law School?

I strive to be civil and respectful to all, especially senators who serve in an institution I deeply respect. Sometimes, however, you have to be honest and call out threats to democracy for what they are.

Kaine claims to be a person of faith and a former missionary, as well as a believer in “natural rights.” That’s all fine and good, whatever he means by that, but to completely misunderstand, if not demean, a founding principle may describe what’s wrong with one of our nation’s two major political parties (guess which one?). Polling shows that Democrats increasingly are secular, if not atheistic. And if you don’t believe in a Creator God, then you probably place your “faith” in government. It just stands to reason.

Don’t believe me? Take a gander at this, spoken at a confirmation hearing just this week for Riley Barnes to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. I’ve included Kaine’s full comment so I’m not accused of cherry-picking. I promise you that Kaine will vote against reporting Barnes’ nomination and his confirmation, as he has nearly every Trump nominee.

Here’s what Barnes said in his written testimony that offended the junior senator from Virginia:

In his first remarks to State Department employees, Secretary Rubio emphasized that, “We are a nation founded on a powerful principle, and that powerful principle is that all men are created equal, because our rights come from God our Creator – not from our laws, not from our governments.” The Secretary went on to say that we will always be strong defenders of that principle. And that’s why the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor is important. We are a nation of individuals, each made in the image of God and possessing an inherent dignity. This is a truth that our founders understood as essential to American self-government.”

Senator Kaine was offended and triggered by this. After his diatribe against the Declaration of Independence, he finally asked a question about reductions in force at the US State Department, underscoring what Senate Democrats seem to care most about - reducing the size and scope of a badly bloated and out-of-control federal bureaucracy.

US Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), also a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, showed up at the hearing just as his colleague from Virginia was bloviating about government being the author of all rights, and how Jefferson’s profound words reflect, if not inspire, Iran’s evil theocracy. If this video starts here with Kaine’s blathering, advance to the 4:17 mark of the video for Sen. Cruz’s retort.

Sadly, if not alarmingly, most of Kaine’s colleagues and much of the legacy media would likely agree with him. Note how none challenged his comments in the media, even though Kaine’s remarks have been strictly limited to mostly conservative media.

I wonder if Senator Kaine has confused the Declaration of Independence with Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which clearly subscribes to his notion that rights come from government. In this case, an increasingly censorious, suicide-promoting, and tyrannical government that puts the rights of criminal aliens above those of its own citizens. Canada’s charter, such as it is, appears no more valuable than the 1936 Soviet Constitution, which Joseph Stalin wrote for propaganda purposes and promptly ignored, but not after slaughtering a few million Russians and Ukrainians. At least Canada hasn’t done that yet, even though its Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program is killing people at a rate 10 times faster than the United States, despite having about 10 percent of our population.

Even more sadly, we’re stuck with Kaine for more than five more years. He was just reelected to a third term last November, defeating one of Trump’s nominees, retired Navy Captain Hung Cao (R-VA), a neighbor of mine who has been nominated as Undersecretary of the Navy. Cao is one of more than HUNDREDS of Trump nominees languishing in the Senate due to the mindless intransigence of Senate Democrats who believe in following the polling of their crazy left-wing, progressive base rather than actually doing their jobs.

Trump is the first president in modern history to not have a single nominee for some 1,300 positions requiring the Senate’s advice and consent confirmed expeditiously by voice vote. Over 1,100 civilian nominees of Bill Clinton were confirmed expeditiously; over 800 were confirmed by voice vote for both Bushes and Barack Obama. Even during Trump’s first term, over 500 were confirmed. Not a single nominee has been confirmed by voice vote, and only 143 have been confirmed thus far. As Senate Majority Leader John Thune has noted, over two-thirds of the Senate’s time has been spent on “human relations” or HR work, confirming nominees.

Senate Democrats clearly got the memo that their crazy base wants them to fight, no matter their responsibilities. The Constitution says the Senate SHALL advise and consent, not block, nominees en masse. Here’s the list of pending nominations.

This is no way to run a government. Do they really think every nominee for every position is unqualified or unfit for office? Hung Cao? Really? Apparently so. It’s irresponsibility on steroids. Cao is a Vietnamese refugee who came to America, found his way into the Naval Academy, and served as an underwater demolition expert for the US Navy, retiring at the rank of Captain. And a highly decorated one at that, something Tim Kaine wouldn’t understand.

Senate leader Thune, likely next week, will go nuclear on changing the rules to expedite the consideration of Trump’s nominees for hundreds of positions he needs filled to do what Americans elected him to do. While the Senate has always been a political institution, it’s too bad that Senate Democrats have put their partisan agenda ahead of their constitutional responsibilities. It saddens me.

Leader Thune will be forced to execute the “nuclear option,” probably early next week, to force a rules change with 51 votes to expedite the confirmation process for mostly non-controversial nominees. This is likely to include “en bloc” confirmations for lower-level nominees that Democrats themselves proposed just a couple of years ago. It won’t touch lifetime judicial nominations. Having been a presidential nominee, I know what it’s like to put your life on hold for weeks, even months, while the Senate gets its act together. And it’s gotten worse since I was a nominee nearly 30 years ago.

This is not the first time Kaine has said something preposterous. In 2020, he took to the Senate floor to declare that slavery was an American invention. Any reader of history or the Bible knows that false on steroids. He's at it again.

We should be surprised when we have senators like Tim Kaine denying and demeaning a basic foundational principle of our government.

Talk about a threat to democracy. I apologize to America that Tim Kaine is my senator.

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