Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville ® said he voted against the nomination of the Pentagon’s next Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman over the military officer’s push to promote “woke policies.”
Tuberville said he objected Air Force Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown Jr.’s efforts to recruit and promote racial minorities in the ranks. He argued that such equal opportunity efforts threaten military readiness.
“I heard some things he talked about, about race and things that he wanted to mix into the military,” he told Bloomberg Television’s “Balance of Power” on Tuesday. “Our military is not an equal opportunity employer. We’re looking for the best of the best to do whatever. We’re not looking for different groups, social justice groups. We don’t want to single-handedly destroy our military from within.”
Tuberville’s comments are not entirely accurate, as the U.S. military since 1948 has had an equal opportunity policy, signed into law by President Truman via an executive order. The effort desegregated the military and guaranteed “equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.”
No, he cannot be removed from the committee. Nor can he be recalled. At best he could be impeached, but just look at the House and tell me if you think they’d impeach Tubby. The problem is the way things are set up. Typically the Senate Armed Forces Committee clears a bloc of nominees and sends that bloc to the Senate floor and they vote on the bloc instead of each individual nominee. Even if they got rid of Tubby, he could still cause the exact same problem as any senator can object to the bloc and then each nominee has to be individually voted in. That is a multistage process requiring several votes to be taken. Multiply that by 600+ and that’s all the Senate would be doing for years. Sure, Schumer could start that, but as more than one place has said, it’d take all the senate’s time for the foreseeable future. So it isn’t a matter of the Dems doing nothing, but rather the list is too long for it to be a viable option to take for all the nominees.
Also doing the runaround has the nasty side effect of politicizing military promotions and would make bullshit like what McConnell did in the end of Obama’s presidency with the Supreme Court normal for military nominations. Do you really want that to be the norm?