An American Lion

Legislative tactician extraordinaire Stuart Smalley

Face it, Senate Republicans—you’re pathetic. You don’t represent the ideals of the Republican Party. With a handful of exceptions, you barely represent your constituents. But you’re not the Republicans I grew up with. You’re a disgrace. And a third-rate TV comedian has eaten your lunch:

The Republicans are steamed at Franken because partisans on the left are using a measure he sponsored to paint them as rapist sympathizers — and because Franken isn’t doing much to stop them.

“Trying to tap into the natural sympathy that we have for this victim of this rape —and use that as a justification to frankly misrepresent and embarrass his colleagues, I don’t think it’s a very constructive thing,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in an interview.

“I think it’s going to make a lot of senators leery and start looking at things he’s doing earlier on, because I don’t think it got appropriate attention ahead of time.”

In a chamber where relationship-building is seen as critical, some GOP senators question whether Franken’s handling of the amendment could damage his ability to work across the aisle. Soon after Tennessee GOP Sens. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander co-wrote an op-ed in a local newspaper defending their votes against the Franken measure, the Minnesota Democrat confronted each senator separately to dispute their column — and grew particularly angry in a tense exchange with Corker.

Their votes were disgraceful. They shouldn’t have voted against it. They should have strengthened it with their own amendments and co-opted the sentiment behind it. With ten Senators voting with the Democrats, that’s what you do. Line up behind Hatch, Grassley and Bennet, rather than McCain, Sessions, Vitter, Graham, Inhofe and Coburn, you morons. Unless you’re from a state made up of rapists, child molesters and the Taliban, you vote for laws that protect women, not against them. That’s what you do when you’re challenged by a backbencher with the third least amount of seniority in the United States Senate. You take what he puts up and co-opt it. 

At issue is an amendment to the Pentagon spending bill that would bar “future and existing” federal contracts to defense contractors and subcontractors “at any tier” who mandate employees go through a company’s arbitration process for workplace discrimination claims — including claims of sexual assault. The measure passed 68-30, with 10 Republicans voting yes and 30 voting no.

Franken, who declined to be interviewed, has said previously that the measure was inspired by the story of former KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones, who alleges that she was drugged, beaten and gang-raped at age 19 when stationed in Baghdad. She fought the arbitration clause in her contract, and in September the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that Jones’s sexual assault allegations were not “related to” her employment, allowing her to proceed in court. KBR is fighting the ruling.

Good God, how could anyone vote against that? It’s a no brainer. When handed an amendment like that, you run alongside the bandwagon. Why hand your next opponent something to bash you with? You mean to tell me Al Franken knows more about legislative strategy than the leadership of the Republican Party in the United States Senate?

Amateurs, one and all.