by Andrew Klutey
The announcement last Thursday that a group of Senators led by John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) were going to block a confirmation vote on Obama’s nominee to lead the Pentagon, Chuck Schumer, effectively initiated the first-ever filibuster of a Defense Secretary nomination.
While the move isn’t expected to seriously hurt Hagel’s chances, it’s jarring because it was a charged and partisan move in a political body that is generally seen as tempered and bi-partisan. Its broader significance wasn’t in the challenge to Obama, but in the gradual polarization of the upper house.
So what was the reason for filibuster? For one, a series of attacks led by freshman Tea Party senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), which alleged, among other things, that Hagel—a two-term senator and a decorated veteran—had received money from North Korea and Hamas. I can’t believe that a freshmen senator with the nerve to make such an absurd suggestion would be taken seriously. I think that most would agree—the battering Hagel took from Cruz drew more than a few comparisons to Joe McCarthy’s witch hunt tactics in the 1950s. Even McCain and Graham rebuked Cruz in public, only to later call his requests “reasonable” in a letter asking for further information from the White House.
Another reason for the filibuster was the administration’s purported role in what McCain termed “a massive cover-up” of the September 11th Benghazi attack. McCain accused the White House of being uncooperative in releasing requested documents and refusing to answer pertinent questions. The White House countered by saying it had fulfilled all of these demands, and more—officials have conducted 20 briefings for Congress, testified at 10 hearings, answered 40 congressional inquiries and released 10,000 pages of documents.
Ultimately, there appears to be one of two things happening. The first possibility is that Republicans really believe in their allegations. To start, I hope that they can see through the “North Korea payoff” conspiracy theory. After all, the presumptive Republican front-runner for 2016 has voiced skepticism of far more established theories. Surely they can poke a couple of holes in this one.
It does seem more likely that Republicans believe the “Benghazi cover-up” allegations, considering their zeal for attacking Obama on it throughout the campaign. Is this really the most substantive criticism of the president’s foreign policy that Republicans can mount? If I was a Republican strategist, I would advise Senators Graham and McCain to move on. The Benghazi witch-hunt didn’t gain any traction in the election, and for all their accusations, Republicans don’t have any new evidence or popular support to show. Continuing these attacks just seems out of touch.
Senator Graham and Senator McCain are both smart men. I hope they aren’t drinking the Benghazi kool-aid. Maybe instead, Republicans are trying to stall in hopes of finding something new on Hagel, whose nomination reflects a shift of the Obama administration towards more conciliatory policies with Iran and Palestine with which McCain and company disagree.
That’s their prerogative. Regardless of whether they believe it or not, if Republicans want to continue promoting an unsubstantiated, unpopular, and unimportant line of attack against Obama, that’s okay with me. I don’t think it’s a smart strategic move, but it’s only hurting their party’s foreign policy credibility (which I thought was impossible after the Bush administration).
I do think, however, that the attacks by Senator Cruz on Hagel’s character are totally uncalled for and reflect a far more dangerous trend; they need to be curbed aggressively by Senate leadership. If not, we’ll end up with a Senate that looks much more like the House—rowdy, polarized, and uncontrollable.
