I’m old enough to remember – heck, it wasn’t so long ago – when the GOP prided itself as the “support the troops” party and smeared Democrats as white-flag wimps who didn’t care a whit about the safety or morale of the troops. That was the template for decades. Any time a Democrat dared question a foreign war, most notably George W. Bush’s lie-strewn invasion of Iraq, that critic was immediately tagged as “against the troops.”
My, how times have changed.
The other day, on the Senate floor, we got the spectacle of Republicans fist-bumping each other after they sank an historic act that would speed health care benefits to 3. 5 million vets who’ve been seriously sickened by hazardous pollutants they’d inhaled from waste-disposal burn pits in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here’s the new GOP message, translated into Trumpspeak: “I like soldiers who don’t get cancer from burn pits.”
As you already may have learned, the PACT Act looked destined for passage and a presidential signature. Last month, it rightly sailed through both chambers by a combined vote of 426-102. The Senate vote alone was overwhelmingly bipartisan. But last week, for some minor technical reasons, a second Senate vote was required. Presto! Twenty five Republicans switched to No – a sufficient number to halt the act in its tracks, because now it lacks the necessary 60 votes to clear the usual Republican filibuster hurdle.
In the words of a spokeswoman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, “Promises were made and promises were broken.”
What explains the first-bumpers’ sudden decision to stab the vets in the back? After all, the act’s language is virtually identical to what they endorsed in June. Before we speculate, let’s hear from Lucas Kunce, an ex-Marine with lingering illnesses who was exposed to burn pit fumes during a tour of duty in Iraq. He posted this on the Fox News website:
“Imagine how we felt (last) Thursday, watching all these Republicans, most of whom have never even worn a uniform, throw us a giant middle finger. I know that’s harsh language, but it has to be. Because what they did was about as anti-American as it gets…Patriots don’t attack veterans.”
Wow, the fist-bumpers (including the usual suspects like Ted Cruz) are “anti-American”? I can only shake my head, recalling the days when Republicans got endless mileage from painting the Dems as “soft” on the troops. They mocked ’88 presidential nominee Mike Dukakis for his diminutive posture while riding in a military tank. They drove Georgia Sen. Max Cleland out of office in ’02 – Cleland had lost three limbs in Vietnam – by calling him soft on Osama bin Laden. In ’04 they slimed presidential nominee John Kerry’s Vietnam service and said he was “against the troops” because he’d voted No on one particular military funding bill.
I’m tempted to blame the MAGA mentality for the GOP’s big switcheroo, but that really wouldn’t be true. Back in 2013, when Senate Republicans (led by Cruz) precipitated a long government shutdown to protest the funding of Obamacare, the collateral damage included death gratuities to grieving military families. Normal policy required the Pentagon, within 36 hours of death notification, to wire $100,000 to each affected household, to cover funeral costs and travel costs of meeting the flag-draped coffin. But thanks to the shutdown targeting Obamacare, the death gratuities were held up for weeks. A Forbes magazine analyst, who specialized in national security issues, rebuked the GOP’s “ideological fervor fed at the expense of America’s warfighters.”
The current GOP’s sudden decision to thwart the burn-pit act doesn’t appear to be a case of ideological fervor; remember, most of the fist-bumpers were Yes voters last month. What we witnessed the other day – the likeliest explanation – was a case of petty partisan revenge. Senate Democrats had caught Mitch McConnell by surprise when they forged a deal with holdout Joe Manchin to fight inflation and climate change…so they retaliated by skunking the Dems – using the sick vets as pawns, literally playing with their lives. That’ll show those libs!
Kunce, the aforementioned ex-Marine, wrote on the Fox News website, “We (vets) did our time. I served my country for 13 years…I only wish our leaders could make an ounce of sacrifice that our veterans have.” But, at this point, what else can we expect from a Republican party that’s led (however tenuously) by a guy who has used words like “losers” and “suckers” to describe soldiers who paid the ultimate sacrifice?