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As Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s blockade against U.S. military promotions has dragged on for months, the Alabama Republican has received overwhelming criticisms from multiple corners. As regular readers know, this position has been rejected by every living former Defense secretary. And retired military leaders. And veterans. And congressional Democrats. And the White House. And military spouses. And his own Republican colleagues. And a majority of people living in Alabama.
But it’s the currently serving U.S. military leaders who stand out most, because of the unusual nature of the circumstances. As a rule, officials in positions of authority within the U.S. military go out of their way to avoid criticizing politicians — in part out of a sense of propriety, in part to remain apolitical, and in part because members of Congress ultimately pay the Pentagon’s bills.
Nevertheless, the right-wing Alabaman hasn’t left the military with much of a choice.
As my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones noted, the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force wrote a joint op-ed for The Washington Post this week, pleading with him to be more responsible and explaining to the senator that he’s actively eroding “the foundation of America’s enduring military advantage.”
The publication of the piece raised eyebrows throughout the political world, but as Politico noted, one of the service secretaries went a little further during a CNN appearance.
The leaders of three branches of the U.S. military slammed Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) over his monthslong blockade of senior military promotions Tuesday, with one accusing the Republican senator of “aiding and abetting communists.”
“For someone who was born in a communist country, I would have never imagined that actually one of our own senators would actually be aiding and abetting communists and other autocratic regimes around the world,” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro — a Cuban-born Navy veteran — said during the nationally televised interview.
Del Toro added that Tuberville’s radical tactics are “having a real negative impact and will continue to have a real negative impact on our combat readiness.”
To be sure, we’ve been building toward this point for much of the year, and a variety of voices from within the military have, with varying degrees of restraint, voiced related concerns about the GOP senator’s willingness to undermine his own country’s armed forces as part of a ridiculous anti-abortion tantrum.
In July, for example, Lt. Gen. Andrew Rohling, the deputy commanding general of U.S. Army Europe-Africa, met with a bipartisan group of senators and urged them to break Tuberville’s blockade. Soon after, Rohling told Punchbowl News that Tuberville’s tactics are “reprehensible, irresponsible and dangerous.”
But all things considered, for the currently serving secretary of the Navy to tell a national television audience that a Republican senator is “aiding and abetting communists” seems like a rhetorical escalation.
Tuberville, meanwhile, doesn’t appear to care. In fact, as recently as three weeks ago, the Alabaman explicitly said he doesn’t care, and the senator told NBC News on Tuesday that he believes he’s in a “stronger” position now than ever before.
In a healthy political environment, Tuberville taking steps to undermine his own country’s military during a time of security uncertainty would be a career-ending fiasco. In 2023, the Republican expects to get away with his radical tactics without any consequences at all — and given the state of GOP politics and the prevailing political winds in Alabama, the right-wing senator might very well be correct.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.