Will McConnell Let A Blackout Drunk Helm the Nation’s Largest Employer?

The only “good” news about this question is that we won’t agonize over it for too long. We should know the answer by tonight. I think one main reason that the Democrats are depressed and not wanting to follow politics right now is that we’re simply worn out from the prolonged suspense of whether Trump could get in for a second term.

We bit our nails for two long years — four, if you want to count the time before he declared he was running — and there’s only so much emotional stamina anybody has. So before the cock crows we could see Pete Hegseth, reportedly a blackout drunk who physically abuses women, in charge of the largest agency in the federal government — and the largest employer in the United States.

(I know why other Dems are tuning out. I wish I could bring myself to.)  This is appalling that this man has gotten as far as he has. Will Mitch McConnell stop him?

The state of play so far is that Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are no votes on Hegseth. Joni Ernst was pressured to go to the Dark Side when pro-Hegseth people began running ads in Iowa, letting her know who butters her bread. So she folded a while back, which is tragic. 

McConnell could vote no. Now his no vote alone won’t get the job done. But his no vote would make it acceptable for the old school Republicans to follow suit and save the country from this horrific embarrassment that it’s about to enter into. So will McConnell do it? Here’s what little is known.

“It’s quite possible he could flip on final passage, but for a guy who has long cared about reputation and wanting to go down as a great Senate leader, McConnell can never quite put aside his deep partisanship/value on what’s good for the party,” said Brian Rosenwald, a political historian at the University of Pennsylvania.

But even if McConnell flipped on the final vote, Democrats would need a fourth Republican to block Hegseth’s nomination. A final vote is expected around 9 p.m. Friday after a daylong debate on the Senate floor. Hegseth’s path to the nomination continues to be rocky, with a new report revealing he paid $50,000 to a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017, an incident he’s denied.

McConnell voted to advance the confirmation and usually a procedural vote and a substantive vote match. But not always. McConnell could have voted no and all that would have done is kick it to J.D. Vance to break the tie. So McConnell may have just let things go the way they were going to go anyway and that may not be his final word on the subject.

Or, he could want a woman abusing blackout drunk running the Department of Defense. I suppose that is possible. The fact that we’re even having this conversation and speculating about these things tells you everything you need to know about how far out of control American politics has gotten.