OPINION:
Since they arrived on the scene, and for reasons known only to them, Team Biden has proceeded as if the regime in Tehran is the right answer in the Middle East. Accordingly, the first thing they did was to reopen negotiations with them on a range of issues, including nuclear weapons, hostages, cash in Western banks, etc.
Consequently, the barbarism committed by Hamas has to be discouraging to the current occupants of the West Wing since it is pretty likely that their pals in Tehran are proximately responsible for it.
Team Biden has also negotiated with the communists in Venezuela for the oil it refuses to produce here in the United States. In an awkward moment, those same communists suspended the results of the elections because the other side won.
Team Biden has negotiated to give more power to the international bureaucrats at the World Health Organization — the very same ones who did their best to cover up the responsibility of slaving, genocidal, communist China in the origination and dissemination of the COVID-19 virus.
The Biden crew will talk to everyone and negotiate away almost anything. They have negotiated with drug companies to help ensure fewer remedies reach American patients, with terrorists for any number of things, with Russian leader Vladimir Putin for WNBA players in exchange for someone literally nicknamed the Merchant of Death, with moderate Republican senators to give away cash to Taiwan to help the American semiconductor industry (you read that right), with Saudi Arabia for oil (again), and on and on and on.
In fact, here is the entire list of people on this planet with whom the Biden administration will not negotiate: Thomas Hawley Tuberville, United States senator from Alabama.
Mr. Tuberville, as you may know, has placed a hold on military promotions until someone, anyone in the Pentagon, can explain to him why their policies on paying for abortions for those in their charge go well beyond the guardrails that already exist in federal law.
In other words, Mr. Tuberville wants to know why the Department of Defense – alone among citizens and organizations in the United States — is above the law.
Apparently, you are not allowed to ask that question, not even if you are a senator.
Mr. Tuberville has repeatedly indicated that he is open to conversation and negotiation on this question. In response, Mr. Biden has called his actions “totally irresponsible” and indicated that Mr. Tuberville’s hold is undermining American military capability.
Do you know what Mr. Biden has not done? He has not picked up the phone and talked to Mr. Tuberville; he has not tried to negotiate this particular impasse.
Instead, he and his allies have talked much about military readiness and similar nonsense.
Despite what the legacy media is reporting, the holds are neither unprecedented nor even that extensive. As recently as 2020, Sen. Tammy Duckworth said that she would block the confirmation of more than a thousand senior military promotions to force then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to promote Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman of all people.
For comparison, Mr. Tuberville’s hold has affected about 350 promotions.
Moreover, it might be important to note that back when this nation was winning wars, our ratio of generals to enlisted was about 1 to 6,000. That ratio is now about 1 general for every 1,600 enlisted.
In short, we have been managing to lose wars for a generation now with a surplus of generals; there’s no reason to think we can’t squeak by without a few more for a while.
Mr. Biden has not been avoiding negotiating with Mr. Tuberville for reasons of military readiness or national security. He has been avoiding him because Mr. Biden knows that his political allies do not want and cannot tolerate any negotiated settlement with respect to abortion.
Democratic operatives have wisely, cynically, and inaccurately taken the offensive and characterized any effort to place limits on abortion as a “ban.” That is designed to hide the simple and terrible fact that today’s Democratic Party – led by a church-going Catholic who works his rosary beads in public on the regular – will not accept any limitation whatsoever on abortion. Not 15 weeks, not third trimester, not partial birth, not any limit.
Negotiating with Mr. Tuberville would risk exposing that fact and the Democrats for the extremists they are with respect to abortion.
Chatting up the mullahs in Iran is one thing; dealing with the enforcers at Planned Parenthood is quite another.
• Michael McKenna is the president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House.
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