The time has come to drink Jennifer Rubin’s tears, as Chuck Hagel’s confirmation vote has cleared the cloture vote in the Senate and the stupid filibuster is finally broken. In the end, Hagel received 71 votes, which is more than he will get when it comes time for the actual vote on confirmation. It’s interesting to look at the roll call because it reveals a bit about how Republicans view the Senate and it’s role in advising and consenting to the president about his cabinet. For example, some relatively moderate Republicans, like Ohio’s Rob Portman and Illinois’ Mark Kirk, voted to uphold the filibuster, while Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby of Alabama, and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma did not. It seems that the newer members (Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona excepted) were more likely to be obstinate.
The same thing could be seen when the Democrats attempted to amend the filibuster rule. It was long-serving members like Carl Levin, Max Baucus, and Barbara Boxer who were the most skittish about changing the traditional way of doing business, while almost all of the Democrats elected since 2006 were in favor of reform.
Another interesting feature of this cloture vote is that the neo-cons mostly voted for it. That includes John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and their new sidekick Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. For all their bitching about Hagel, they didn’t want to create the precedent that Defense nominees could not be afforded an up or down vote.
Anyway, J-Rube’s tears taste like honey nectar.
Her bitter tears taste so sweet:
I just read that same post and came over here to remark that her commentariat is awesome. She’s getting thrashed. I can barely keep up with the thread — the ticker keeps going up with more people tearing into her.
Even when you take into account the bizarre standards applied to Hiatt’s neocon posse, her continued employment is a mystery.
Yeah, the comments are pretty entertaining.
Addendum — Rubin turns on AIPAC.
However unprincipled an organization AIPAC may be, its leaders are too smart to go tilting at windmills. That-a-way lies political irrelevance. AIPAC will, unfortunately, not be irrelevant anytime soon.
This is just bizarre:
Had any Democrat who considers him or herself to be responsible on national security broken ranks, I am certain others would have followed and Hagel would not have been confirmed. Had there been a responsible president in the White House, Hagel would not have been nominated.
Dennis Kucinich? Mike Gravel? David Duke?
No, Chuck Hegal. Making Chuck Hegal Secretary of Defense is not just something she doesn’t like – it’s “irresponsible.”
The actual words she writes to justify her position don’t make any sense. This is payback for ‘Senator Betray-us’ turning against the Iraq War. Except it’s failed payback, so the rage becomes even greater for being impotent.
I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun reading an opinion piece.
Yeah, I didn’t have the stomach to link to Rubin’s offal. Tears are to be had, though. In her world, Senators Rubio and Cruz are “principled leaders”. And:
“Other than going along with Democrats, there is no justifiable reason for those who saw Hagel for what he is (inept, extreme, inexperienced, etc.) to have voted for cloture.”
Other than the prospect of an unprecedented sustained filibuster of a Cabinet nominee, a Secretary of Defense at a time of war yet. Yeah, other than that, there’s no justifiable reason that GOP Senators closed debate.
I’m happy to have been wrong on this- I thought the filibuster would be sustained until Graham and Co. extracted some memo they could use to try to impeach Obama. Guess the smearing document couldn’t be manufactured. Guess it was all about their hatred for Hagel, then.
Didn’t the Senate Republicans just throw a weeks-long hissy fit over the Hagel nomination, claiming that it was worse than Hitler to the Mussolini squared? If Hagel got his mitts on the Secretaryship, the United States would become past tense, just a memory, and you might as well peel Israel off all the globes and world maps?
But here we go, with one of those famous upperdown votes, which will likely confirm Hagel in his new position. JRube is all in a dither because it seems her bestest pals in the Senate were just blowing smoke up her dress, and I’m similarly confused because it seems that the Senate Republicans were indeed on a tantrum tear.
Well, I’m sure the bulldogs of the Fourth Estate will be buttonholing their favorite talk show guests like Johnny Straighttalk and Lindsay Lightning to get remind them of their histrionics and how their antics didn’t quite match their votes. Right?
Oooh, listen: Crickets!
She’s a treasure.
Honey nectar? More like rancid oil. I don’t want to drink her tears, I want to set them on fire.
Rancid, sure — but to watch them flow is a thing of beauty.