Tommy Tuberville Is Still A Disgrace

He has largely ended his nine-month blockade on military appointments and promotions, but the damage from that will linger.

Tommy Tuberville speaks to members of the press at the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 15, 2023 in Washington, D.C. Photo: Alex Wong, Getty Images

Today, 425 military families, and U.S. armed forces in general, can breathe a sigh of relief. On Tuesday, Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama—or perhaps I should say Florida—finally relented, lifting his one-man hold on military promotions. Within hours, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was able to push through 425 approvals.

Since February, the Senate’s dumbest man has used his Senate privileges to object to hundreds of approvals of military promotions and appointments. He did this ostensibly to protest the military’s policy of reimbursing travel expenses for servicemembers seeking abortions, because some are stationed in states with abortion bans. In other words, Tuberville played politics with our military.

He could have sued to block the policy in court, but Tuberville wanted to make a scene and draw attention. He knew that his hold could jam up Senate business because if a roll-call vote had to occur for each officer, it would take months to get through them all, rendering other Senate business impossible.

Senate Democrats didn’t want to cede that power to a MAGA hostage taker, so the logjam of approvals grew. GOP Senators, many of themselves veterans, begged, condemned and warned Tuberville to back down. But stubbornly, and without justification, he held firm.

In today’s piece, we’ll look at the outcome of this blockade and what caused Tuberville to back down, but also why his capitulation wasn’t total, leaving key positions still unfilled. We’ll also look at how his hold forced a reckoning within the GOP and damaged the MAGA brand further with key voters.

A total waste

We should start from the obvious. Tuberville did not succeed in what he set out to do. The Pentagon’s reimbursement policy for reproductive services remains intact and in place. All that Tuberville managed to do for over nine months is up-end the lives of hundreds of families of our nation’s top military leaders while damaging the readiness of our armed forces.

As Sen. Schumer noted, “Senator Tuberville held out for months, hurt national security and military families, and didn’t get anything he wanted.”

Tuberville of course disagrees, claiming no one won. “It was pretty much a draw,” he said. “They didn’t get what they wanted. We didn’t get what I wanted.” 

This is quite wrong. Senate Democrats and a group of GOP senators did get what they wanted: for Tuberville to back down. 

Perhaps Tuberville is referring to the fact that he still, and bafflingly, maintains a hold on 11 top appointments, all for officers with ranks of four stars or higher. This again is completely pointless and keeps our military at lower readiness in a dangerous world. More on that below.

Asked to explain himself, Tuberville proved he may have taken too many football-related knocks to the head. Of the Pentagon’s policy, Tuberville served this word salad up on Newsmax:

It’s go’n be in there till we get somebody in the White House that [is] really concerned and cares about life, and really concerned about our military. Uh, if we, don’t get, uh, somebody like President Trump elected president next year, this group will continue for the next four years to just run over the Constitution, and run over the taxpayers of this country, and change this to something else.

Look at what they’re doin’ right now. We’re fundin’ Ukraine, we have no business. We need a border. But today I saw a release where President Biden wants to open the border with Guatemala, and, and just let more and more people in.

Folks, wake up, we’re in trouble, we are losing our country by the minute, and it’s getting worse, I hate this happened today with these promotions, but again, we have gotta fight for a strong military and we’ll continue to do that.

(Narrator: The U.S. shares no border with Guatemala.)

A threatened standing order finally forces Tuberville to back down

There were always only three routes for Senate Democrats to overcome Tuberville’s blockade.

First, they could have brought up the appointments individually, eating into precious Senate time. This of course was what Tuberville wanted, so Schumer correctly did not entertain this solution except for top military appointments. Schumer allowed just three votes as exceptions: Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. Randy A. George as Army chief of staff; and Gen. Eric M. Smith as Marine Corps commandant. Still, that process took all weekend.

GOP Senators, many of themselves veterans, tried to move other appointments through by raising them individually, but Tuberville objected to each and every one. It was a bust, but it hardened attitudes toward him.

Second, Senate Democrats could have hoped that GOP leadership would force Tuberville to back down after political fallout from his decision grew large enough. This worked to the extent that, after over nine months of this blockade, there were a number of GOP senators who were frustrated and angry enough at one of their own to call him out publicly. But months of backroom negotiations and cajoling, even by his own party, did not result in Tuberville relenting.

Third, and finally, Senate Democrats could have pushed for a suspension of the rules that permit a single senator to object the way Tuberville had. They did go this route, but it was a tricky process. Because of the way the rule would be suspended—by way of a standing order that would last through the rest of the session—it needed first to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. That meant that with 51 Democrats and independents on board, they would still need nine GOP senators to go along.

Apparently, the math became clear by Tuesday that there were finally at least nine GOP senators willing to stand up to Tuberville. This was in large part because of the enormous political price that the party was beginning to pay in the eyes of one of its most staunch constituencies: the military.

In the end, Tuberville backed down because he knew he was going to lose a vote on the Senate floor and that his blockade would fail because enough senators from his own party were willing to vote with the Democrats to end it.

11 left hanging

Tuberville apparently didn’t want to be totally humiliated by this impending defeat, so he stubbornly kept in place his hold over 11 top military brass.  The positions left vacant to satisfy Tuberville’s ego comprise quite the list:

• Commander of Pacific Air Forces;

• Commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet;

• Air Component Command for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command;

• Commander for Air Combat Command;

• The head of the Navy’s Nuclear Propulsion Program;

• The head of Northern Command; 

• The head of the U.S. Cyber Command;

• Vice chief of staff of the Army;

• Vice chief of staff of the Air Force;

• Vice chief of Space Operations; and

• Vice chief of Naval Operations

This likely means that Schumer will have to call separate roll-call votes for each of these positions (using up remaining Senate time between now and the holiday break) or leave them unfilled until sometime next year.

The reason Tuberville provided for these remaining holds is simply disgraceful. Tuberville claims that these top picks and promotions “need vetting,” but he has given no details, and he has never raised this issue before. He also claims he wants to withhold support for “woke” nominees, whatever that means.

Tuberville must understand that he has already lost this fight. There is no good reason to keep these top level commanders out of their posts at a time of growing danger in several parts of the globe.

The abortion self-own

Tuberville may have been a decent coach, but he is no political strategist. His one-man crusade against the policy took a hot-button issue and made it radioactive for his own party, choosing an otherwise sacrosanct target—our armed forces—on which to wedge it squarely.

After so many months, the American public was running out of patience over the blockade. Polling by Data for Progress found that 63 percent of voters wanted promotions to resume, regardless of the military’s abortion policies. That included majorities in all political groups: 72 percent of Democrats, 59 percent of Independents, and, importantly, 56 percent of Republicans.

It was inevitable that Tuberville’s holds would reach a breaking point, and that the GOP would face increasingly angry calls from veterans groups and military families over the pointless holds. When that point was reached—and time was running out for many of these promotions to be approved—GOP senators would face a stark choice: stand by arcane rules to protect Tuberville and his extreme abortion position, or yield to public pressure and side with the military officers and their families.

It was this choice that led enough GOP members to defect and prepare to vote with the Democrats to get around the blockade. But the after-effects of the debacle will linger. Americans of all parties have seen how far extremists like Tuberville will go on the question of abortion, even so far as to directly harm our military and strip our military officers of the positions they have worked so hard for just to prove a petty point.

Tuberville is a close ally of Trump and a hardcore MAGA acolyte. The paralysis he created in the Senate echoes the dysfunction and chaos brought about in the House by MAGA radicals in that chamber. Democrats can and must use these examples to paint Republicans as the obstructionists, nihilists and extremists they are, and to ensure that critical swing voters remember this come November.