Republican opponents are sending signals that Chuck Hagel’s bid to become defense secretary will probably come to an up-or-down vote soon in the Senate.
That’s unless more information damaging to the nominee – and the Obama administration – surfaces in the coming week.
Critics maintain the decorated Vietnam combat veteran and former senator is unqualified to lead the U.S. military. A top White House official expressed “grave concern” over the delayed confirmation vote, adding that there was nothing to worry about in any disclosures that may yet come.
Arizona Sen. John McCain, a key Republican on defense matters, said Sunday that he doesn’t believe Hagel, a one-time colleague and friend, is qualified. “But I don’t believe that we should hold up his nomination any further, because I think it’s (been) a reasonable amount of time to have questions answered.”
OK, so that’s really stupid. Since Republicans filibustered Hagel, there haven’t been any additional questions — congress is in recess. So the filibuster delayed the vote for “a reasonable amount of time to have questions answered” — except that during this additional time, no additional questions were answered.
What we’re seeing here is Senate Republicans beginning to get squeamish about using the filibuster. Throughout this sorry episode, Republicans have been denying that it’s a filbuster, saying they were merely delaying the vote. But, as we’re now seeing, the delay was completely pointless. It was just slowing down the confirmation for the sake of slowing down the confirmation. A useless endeavor that amounted to muscle-flexing and shadow boxing — then running away screaming when the other guy puts up his dukes,
