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JULY 11, 2023

Cooper on TAP

The GOP's Tommy Tuberville Problem

The Alabama senator's blockade of military promotions reveals the
party's real position on abortion.

If history had been any guide, Republicans should have won the 2022
midterms in a blowout. President Biden's approval rating was
underwater, inflation was higher than it had been for 40 years, and most
importantly, first-term presidents almost always lose seats in the
following midterm. Instead, Republicans just barely won control of the
House, and actually lost a Senate seat. It was the best Democratic
performance from such an incumbent position since 1934
<[link removed]>.

There were manifold reasons for this GOP faceplant, but the main one was
the

**Dobbs** decision striking down

**Roe v. Wade**. It was deeply unpopular
<[link removed]>
at the time and has only become more
<[link removed]>
so as the gruesome consequences
<[link removed]>
of state-level abortion bans have become clear.

And now with the 2024 election heaving into view, Republicans have yet
another abortion problem on their hands: Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL),
who has launched a one-man crusade against the Pentagon's post-

**Dobbs** policy of providing abortion care
<[link removed]>
to military members by holding promotions hostage until the policy is
reversed. His antics are making it all too easy to point out what the
GOP will do if they get the chance: ban all abortion across the country.

Senate approval of military promotions has hitherto been routine, but
now Tuberville has blocked some 256 officer promotions
<[link removed]>
and counting-including most recently the head of the Marines
<[link removed]>,
which now lacks an official chief for the first time in 164 years.

Since

**Dobbs**, many national-level Republicans have attempted to sidestep
the abortion question. Donald Trump and Chris Christie have said
<[link removed]>
that the issue should be left up to the states. Nikki Haley said in a
speech
<[link removed]>
that she would seek some "national consensus" without saying what that
means. House Republicans have struggled
<[link removed]>
to get a national ban after 15 weeks to the floor (though they have
passed
<[link removed]>
other more modest restrictions).

But the real Republican preference here is obvious: Abortion should be
banned across the country, with as few exceptions as they think they can
get away with. That's what they're doing at the state level, where
the GOP is enacting ever-stricter bans wherever they can. Florida Gov.
Ron DeSantis recently signed
<[link removed]>
a ban after six weeks-before many women even know they're pregnant.
Fourteen other states
<[link removed]>
have banned it entirely. A Nebraska teenager and her mother were
recently convicted
<[link removed]>
of obtaining and using abortion pills after the state's 20-week ban;
they both face potentially years in prison.

Savvier Republicans are starting to grasp that abortion is a massive
political liability. But they won't moderate their position; they will
try to "force it through under cover of darkness," to quote Alex Pareene
<[link removed]>.
The likely strategy is judicial rule-by-decree-witness the recent
attempt
<[link removed]>
from Texas Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk to seize personal control of the FDA
approval process and ban abortion pills.

But Tuberville's stunt plays havoc with that strategy. He's not only
demanding abortion access for a large group of Americans be cut off,
he's doing it to one of the most prominent and respected institutions
in the country. A Gallup poll finds that 64 percent
<[link removed]>
of Americans express confidence in the military-somewhat alarmingly
the highest figure aside from small business. (Congress, by contrast,
gets 7 percent confidence.)

You don't have to be Napoleon Bonaparte to think that a single airhead
former football coach
<[link removed]>
is not the person to be meddling with the Pentagon command structure at
any time, but Tuberville's doing it at a time when the military is
extensively involved
<[link removed]>
in helping Ukraine fight off Vladimir Putin's war of aggression. The
Democratic attack ads practically write themselves.

Yet if Tuberville's recent addle-brained comments
<[link removed]>
in defense of white nationalism are any guide, he's not going to back
down anytime soon.

~ RYAN COOPER

Follow Ryan Cooper on Twitter <[link removed]>

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[link removed]
Gunning for More VA Privatization
<[link removed]>
Veterans just dodged a GOP bullet to their health system, but now they
face bipartisan fire once again. BY SUZANNE GORDON & STEVE EARLY

[link removed]
Why Racial Remedy Still Matters
<[link removed]>
Focusing on class is good policy, but the long legacy of state-supported
racism means we must find ways to keep taking race into account. BY
ROBERT KUTTNER

In Its Next Term, the Supreme Court Could Claim More Power for Itself
<[link removed]>

A case on its docket could enable justices to strip rulemaking authority
from federal agencies and reassign it to themselves. BY CRAIG BECKER

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