Twenty-four Senate Democrats joined with Republicans to confirm an election-denier who taunted Ruth Bader Ginsburg after her death in 2020 as the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs.
Our own Tim Kaine was among the 24; Mark Warner, credit where credit is due, was not.
Kaine hasn’t commented on his vote to confirm Doug Collins, a former congressman from Georgia who joined an amicus brief filed by a group of House Republicans to support a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 election.
This Collins guy who garnered the support of 24 Senate Democrats, including Tim Kaine, Bernie Sanders and Raphael Warnock, to let you know who exactly sold their souls on this one, had this to say, on Twitter, after RBG died:
“RIP to the more than 30 million innocent babies that have been murdered during the decades that Ruth Bader Ginsburg defended pro-abortion laws. With Donald Trump nominating a replacement that values human life, generations of unborn children have a chance to live.”
This was before Trump and Mitch McConnell rushed through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in record time, to get ahead of Trump losing the 2020 election.
You may remember that McConnell held up the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court for eight months because he said it would be unfair to fill the seat ahead of a presidential election.
RBG died six weeks before the 2020 election; Barrett was confirmed a week before the election.
So, we get a guy in charge of the VA who taunted a dead Supreme Court justice to score a political point, and was a member of the cabal that tried to overturn the 2020 election.
Oh, and when he lost in his bid for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia in 2020, he, of course, claimed fraud.
That no doubt endeared him to Trump, who had endorsed him in the 2020 Senate race.
ICYMI
Our hero of the day: Delaware Democrat Chris Coons, a “no” vote on Collins who conceded, in a statement on Twitter, that the nominee “is qualified to be the VA secretary.”
“I hope he’ll lead the agency well, and I hope to work with him going forward. But I’m still a no on every Trump cabinet nominee until Trump walks back his disastrous executive orders,” Coons said.
That’s how you do it, folks.
The fascist oligarchy isn’t playing by the rules as it tries to dismantle our democracy, and expects the loyal opposition to do what it does – I had it explained to me today that the reason Democrats don’t block confirmations and legislation like Republicans did in the Obama and Biden years is because our side wants to maintain and preserve our system of government.
The oligarchs are relying on our side to continue playing by the rules as they continue their efforts to burn it all to the ground.