Bolton Nomination .:. grubbykid.com

Bolton Nomination

Anyone interested in machinations of the Senate, listen to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee debate John Bolton's nomination and the GOP's push to ramrod his nomination through the Senate. More info on the machinations from The Washington Note, specifically, here and here. What was crazy was that Senator Richard G. Lugar bypassing Rules of the Committee not listening to Senator Boxer's Point of Order.

Later... So that was fun. The Democrats, lead by Ranking Member Joseph R. Biden successfully delayed a vote in the Committee on Foreign Relations on the matter of sending to the full Senate the President's nominee to the United Nations, John Bolton. The turning point came not from the fainthearted centrists Chuck Hagel (R NB) or Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), but from George V. Voinovich (R-OH) who spoke out against Bolton due, in part to recent allegations - specifically, his abrasive demeanour. Additional allegations concern Bolton's attempt to fire analysts who disagreed with him, attempting to ascertain the identity of American personnel in NSA intercepts (a no-no), and possible perjury.

The end result of the day's Parliamentary maneuvering, is that the Committee will reconvene in three weeks for a vote, and possibly new hearings with Bolton himself or new witnesses.

Even Later Update... An extended play-by-play and some analysis is included after the jump.

Just to recap the events of the past hour, Senator Lugar thought he had the votes to push this out of committee. He was pushing very hard to get an up or down vote, but the combination of Senators Biden, Boxer, Kerry attempt to take the committee to a closed session for additional testimony in order to protect the witnesses and Bolton gave Hagel and Chaffee enough wiggle room to waffle with their faint hearts - I believe at one point Hagel went on and on about how horrible Bolton actually was but he would vote him out of committee, only to vote against him in the full Senate - which is the ultimate cake+eating maneuver. Hagel with Chaffee could appease the party with a yes vote in the committee and then vote no so that they have cover.

What really tipped the power was Voinovich stating he could not vote in favor of moving the nominee out of committee, which changed the vote to a tie (9-9). Then a point of order by a Republican (it wasn't clear over the radio) about what would happen if a tied vote occured which let Senator Biden go on and on and get fired up. Voinovich's defection allowed the fainthearted twins additional cover to force the committee to reevaluate the nomination. At this point Senator Lugar was backtracking so fast from rushing to a vote to extending investigation with both staffs and continued hearings.

I'm not sure what Voinovich's underlying reasons were, but being from Ohio and from the old small-c conservative background and the fact that he isn't of the Dick Cheney camp, I suspect it is a bit of the Reality Based decision-making which caused his vote of no-confidence. I would suggest reading Matt Yglesias' article on this matter, entitled What's At Stake In the Bolton Nomination, to get a better feel at the political undercurrents at work here.

Comments

Dad says:

Voinovich is getting attacked by his own Party on radio ads here in C-Bus...word is that Colin Powell has reservations about Bolton and still has the political clout to block the nomination should he go public.

Posted by: Dad at April 22, 2005 4:42 PM #

plemeljr says:

Yeah, I know. I had a really long comment, then just gave up and made a new post with all of the new info about Bolton: Bolton Update.