Lay Off Coach Tuberville - He's (Mostly) Right
Why do conservatives always scatter when one of their own comes under attack for a principled stand? Maybe pay attention to what he's fighting, for a change?
My reader knows I am a friend and an avid follower of America's longest-running radio talk show, the Hugh Hewitt Show, which just celebrated its 23rd anniversary. Hugh, a former Reagan Administration official and law school professor (Chapman University, CA), is approaching 500 affiliates and is considered among the best interviewers in the media. Deservedly so. He should be one of the inquisitors for every single one of the GOP presidential debates. He is also the most civil of our radio talkers - a rare breed.
I never miss his show, even when traveling in Spain for the past two weeks. It drives my wife crazy.
And for the record, he’s pro-life. More about that later.
But Hugh nearly sent the mountain bike I was speedily riding along northern Virginia’s Mount Vernon Trail early Thursday morning into the Potomac River with a surprising personal attack on Alabama’s freshman US Senator, former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, over his fight to overturn a Department of Defense abortion policy that Hugh admits is probably illegal.
Hugh, channeling the execrable Steve Schmidt, uncharacteristically suggested Tuberville was competing for “dumbest Senator” with his stand against allowing military promotions to proceed without debate over his opposition to the DOD’s very liberal abortion policy, including using defense (taxpayer) dollars to pay for military personnel to travel to other states for abortions.
But as the father and father-in-law of military personnel (so am I - my son is an Army Lieutenant who deployed to Africa last year), Hugh is aghast that Tuberville’s intransigence is affecting military families whose promotions are languishing. As a former Secretary of the US Senate, I know the process - military promotions requiring Senate confirmation usually occur without debate and almost always with unanimous consent. They are rarely controversial. And there are a lot of them - some 50,000 a year.
Here is your reminder that the Senate primarily operates on “unanimous consent.” It just takes one senator to gum up the works and require actual debate and votes when not everyone agrees. That’s been the case for, lemme think, about 250 years.
But Tuberville, with support from other conservative Senators, told Senate leaders he would not agree to a unanimous consent request to proceed with military promotions (flag officers, basically generals, and admirals) without debate. That means the Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer, has to schedule up to two hours of debate on each nomination for it to proceed on the floor. And it’s highly unlikely to take the full two hours. For the record, this is not a “filibuster.” Tuberville denies unanimous consent to forgo up to two hours of debate.
Sadly, as Senator James Lankford from my home state of Oklahoma pointed out on Hugh’s show Thursday morning, Schumer is more interested in being out of session because he cares more about vulnerable Senators going home to protect a Democratic majority than actually doing his job (sadly, Hugh’s program hasn’t posted the interview on his website as of this writing). After his interview, Hugh took a potshot at Lankford for parroting GOP spin on the issue.
Democrats see a wonderful wedge issue, diving pro-defense GOP advocates from their pro-life allies. The talented pro-abortion Democratic US Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), representing a purple district including Marine Base Quantico, perfectly parroted the Biden Administration’s radical pro-abortion defense policy.
“I represent Quantico. I represent thousands of members of the U.S. Marine Corps, thousands of active duty service members, as well as tens of thousands of Veterans across Virginia's Seventh District,” Spanberger said. “What this one Senator is doing and has been able to do is just absolutely unthinkable and irresponsible — and we heard General Brown use the phrase ‘We have to mitigate the challenges.’ The fact that we have military leaders mitigating the challenges posed by one single Senator — when we have challenges they should be focused on mitigating in the form of our adversaries throughout the world — and they’re mitigating the challenges created by one man is unbelievable to me. It’s irresponsible, it’s outrageous, and it needs to stop. It is dangerous to our nation and our readiness.”
But the avidly pro-abortion congresswoman seems fine with using scarce defense dollars to shuttle pregnant privates to other states at taxpayer expense to facilitate the painful killing of unborn children.
Maybe Hugh and other pro-life conservatives should focus on that instead of promotions that are likely to happen eventually and don’t affect readiness or command structures.
So what if the Marine Corps doesn’t have a Senate-confirmed Commandant right now? They have someone in place who is responsible until that confirmation occurs. Same with every other military position.
I get that military families are in limbo. I also get that the Department of Defense’s policy on abortion is illegal, and I respect Congress’s ability to step in to fix it, as the House voted to do on Thursday. Good for them.
And just to be clear, the DoD’s abortion policy is illegal. And worse, media mavens like Hugh and the mainstream media aren’t adequately reporting the facts of Tuberville’s actions. But I will, courtesy of Tuberville’s Senate website:
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022, the Department of Defense claimed in a memorandum that the ruling would “have significant implications for…the readiness of the Force,” but provided no evidence to support this conclusion. On July 15, 2022, Senator Tuberville and Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) sent a letter calling on Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to justify the assertion. The letter went unanswered.
On October 20, 2022, Secretary Austin released another memorandum entitled “Ensuring Access to Reproductive Health Care.” The memo outlined the Department of Defense’s intent to develop policy, procedures, and programs to expand taxpayer-subsided abortion in the military beyond what is currently allowed under federal law.
On November 28, 2022, Senator Tuberville and his Republican SASC colleagues sent an additional letter to Secretary Austin asking him to explain the October memo and the Department of Defense’s justification for the potential expansion of its abortion policy. In the letter, the senators warned, “The Department’s actions send the implicit message to our service members that pregnancy is a liability to the force and our military’s success hinges on access to abortion. This is an egregious mistake.” Again, the letter went unanswered.
The Department of Defense finally scheduled a briefing for Senate offices on November 17, 2022, about the Department’s memorandums and potential policy changes. However, the briefing was abruptly canceled. In response, on December 5, 2022, Senator Tuberville placed a hold on DoD nominations until the Pentagon rescheduled the canceled briefing and responded to questions about the military’s memos on reproductive care.
Within 24 hours, the DoD rescheduled the staff briefing, and it occurred on December 7, 2022. During the rescheduled briefing for members of Senator Tuberville’s staff, Department of Defense officials revealed their intent to announce a new policy that would cover travel and leave for service members and their dependents seeking abortions. Following the briefing, on December 9, 2022, Senator Tuberville notified Secretary Austin that he would place an additional hold on Department of Defense nominees if the Department implemented its abortion plan, which Senator Tuberville believes is illegal.
The department’s authority to fund abortions is governed by 10 U.S.C. 1093, which limits abortions to cases of rape, incest, or pregnancies that threaten the life of the mother. These rules apply to both service members and their spouses and dependents. Given this provision, the Department of Defense has averaged fewer than 20 abortions per year, with 91 abortions at military facilities occurring between 2016 and 2021. According to a third-party study cited by officials, the number of abortions subsidized by the Department of Defense under the new policy could increase to 4,100 annually — 205 times the number of abortions performed in recent years.
Without responding to Senator Tuberville’s pledge, Secretary Austin released another memorandum on February 16, 2023 announcing the formal implementation of the abortion policy to fund travel and paid time off for service members and their dependents seeking an abortion, despite existing law.
On March 8, 2023, Senator Tuberville followed through with his pledge to hold all general and flag officer nominations on the Senate floor. Senator Tuberville defended his hold on the floor again on March 23, 2023.
Senator Tuberville’s hold forces the Senate to consider and vote on the nominations by regular order instead of approving them in batches by unanimous consent, which can be considerably faster. The nominations can still be approved by the Senate, but the Majority Leader must make additional time for them to be considered on the floor.
Contrary to claims by Democrats, Senator Tuberville’s hold is not unprecedented. The tactic has been threatened and used by senators from both parties for decades. Just a few weeks ago, Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) threatened to hold Pentagon nominees because he was upset his home state lost a competition to house U.S. Space Command headquarters — to Alabama.
Why aren’t Hugh Hewitt and other pro-life conservatives focused on the DoD’s horrific and illegal policy? While breast-beating about their pro-life positions, they are attacking Tuberville personally for trying to get the Defense Department to follow federal law, which prohibits federal funding of abortions. They seem more focused on the temporary inconveniences to military families over the horrific taxpayer-funded abortion policies.
As a former Senate official and senior staffer, I would have preferred Senator Tuberville use a scalpel instead of a blunderbuss. I would have negotiated which officer’s promotions would have advanced over others. And I absolutely would have put a hold on every civilian DoD nomination. Moreover, I would use the appropriation and authorization process to force DoD to follow the law and forego its murderous abortion policy, as the House voted to do on Thursday. But all the DoD has to do to unleash these confirmations is to forgo their illegal policy. Where is the pressure from conservatives such as Hugh Hewitt to do so?
And where the hell is the lawsuit against the DoD policy?
Sadly, Hugh and others are more interested in circular firing squads. It seems to be the Republican way.
Wow. I heard about this. Thank you for breaking it down. As the granddaughter of an Army Colonel and daughter of a Navy Captain it makes me angry that our military can’t focus on their mission but instead it’s about being woke. We are in a sad state right now and it scares me.
Whether Flag Officers get their promotions on time is not important. The work of the military goes on. Tuberville, of course, is correct. All GOPer, except the RINO, should be supporting Tuberville. As usual, you provide background and context to what is happening with the Senate.
William Hamitlon, J.D., Ph.D.
Lake Granby, Co