Secret holds allow senators to indefinitely prevent a presidential nominee from coming up for a vote, without ever having to provide a reason or identify themselves. Senate Republicans have used secret holds to an unprecedented degree under President Obama, and are currently anonymously blocking at least 52 nominees, all of whom were “noncontroversial in committee debate.”
Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) proposed new rules to rein in secret holds, but “Republicans thwarted” the bipartisan effort yesterday when Sen. Jim DeMint attached a poison pill amendment.
The usually mild-mannered Wyden was apoplectic:
[Wyden] accused Sen. Jim DeMint of having “kneecapped” the legislation he’d offered with Sen. Chuck Grassley.
Declaring himself “flabbergasted,” Wyden railed against DeMint for attaching an unrelated amendment regarding a southern border fence to his transparency measure.
“I can’t recall another instance where the cause of open government took a beating — took a blindsiding — like the cause open government took this afternoon,” said the generally mild-mannered Wyden. “We didn’t win this afternoon because we got kneecapped.”
The fact that DeMint put a craven political ploy to hobble the Obama administration by preventing it from filling key posts ahead of tea-bagger pro-transparency dogma is more evidence that despite tea party claims that they are independent of the Republican Party, they are in fact just a splinter group of the GOP — the same 20 percent of Americans who still think Bush did a heckuva great job.
DeMint became a laughingstock in political circles when he declared that health-care reform would be Pres. Obama’s “Waterloo.” Despite his, Fox News’ and others’ best efforts to kill the bill with lies, disinformation and spin, the president and the Democrats passed a bill this spring.
In his endorsements in Republican primaries this year, DeMint may turn out to be the Democrats’ secret weapon for retaining control of the Senate. He has also singlehandedly rendered quaint Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican,” by endorsing right-wing extremists to oppose his sitting colleagues in the Senate:
In Florida, DeMint was the first national Republican to back Marco Rubio in the state’s GOP Senate primary against Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who was considered a shoo-in at the time. DeMint’s support and fundraising for Rubio, a tea party favorite, helped spark a bitter internal fight that ultimately pushed Crist to leave the party last month and run as an independent.
“It kept us alive,” Rubio said of DeMint’s support, including nearly $350,000 in contributions. “Especially early on, it was one of a couple of things that allowed us to survive when very few people thought we had a chance.”
Polls in Florida now find a wide-open race, giving Democrats a legitimate shot at winning.
DeMint also was ahead of his party last year in opposing Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, just before the veteran Republican, facing threats from the right, switched to become a Democrat.
Last week, DeMint broke with McConnell in the Republican leader’s backyard to support tea party favorite Rand Paul in the Kentucky Senate primary. McConnell and other party leaders have backed GOP Secretary of State Trey Grayson. The primary is May 18.
In other cases, DeMint’s silence has been telling. He pointedly refused to aid once-popular Republican Bob Bennett, a three-term senator who was defeated Saturday by conservative voters in Utah’s GOP convention. After Bennett’s loss, DeMint immediately endorsed Mike Lee, one of the two Republicans in a runoff.
DeMint also has declined to endorse Sen. John McCain, the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, who faces a challenge from the right and gets a 77 out of 100 from DeMint’s group despite the Arizona lawmaker’s fight against the pet-project spending known as earmarks.
In California, DeMint-endorsed Chuck DeVore is running in single digits and a distant third against former Rep. Tom Campbell, who recently served as the head of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s Council of Economic Advisors (and who lost his bid to unseat Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 2000 by 19 points), and Carly Fiorina, the disgraced former CEO of Hewlett-Packard.
