The story:
A pro-family leader in Ohio is blasting pro-life Republican senators who voted to approve the nomination of Kathleen Sebelius as Health and Human Services secretary, despite her long history of support for abortion and her connections to notorious late-term abortionist George Tiller.
Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio) was among nine Republicans who supported the Sebelius nomination on Tuesday. Phil Burress, president of Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values, says he was extremely disappointed but not surprised that Voinovich backed Sebelius.
“He comes from this perspective that the President has the right to pick this person and that the senators are supposed to rubber-stamp them, and I don’t understand why he thinks that way,” he admits. “He’s had that position on many other occasions — and so did Mike DeWine when he was in the Senate, and it cost him his job.”
Burress, a friend and ally of Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), says he was “totally shocked” that Brownback voted for Sebelius. He believes Brownback’s move was driven by his desire to become the next governor of Kansas.
Governor Sebelius is who she is – a liberal Democrat brought in by a liberal Democrat to help advance a liberal, Democratic agenda. No problem – Obama is free to pick whom he wishes and were we in the Senate majority we should only reject a Presidential nominee for moral failure of some sort (and in the Sebelius nomination, a case can be made for that given her deceptions regarding the depth of her pro-abortion support). But since we are the minority and can’t change the result, there is no reason for us to join in and give liberal Democrats our votes. It is time to stand firm – and by registering a negative vote against someone like Sebelius we would be indicating our firmness with that very large and very important part of the GOP coalition: pro-life voters and devout Catholics (Sebelius, after all, has been de-facto excommunicated by the Catholic Church).
Here was a chance for the Senate GOP to let the people know that it is on the people’s side…and nine of them went and blew the chance. What for? Likely just a continuance of that poison known as Senatorial collegiality. Such a sentiment is fine when we’re dealing with political parties which have different ideas about how to achieve the same goals – but when the parties are so starkly divided over what America should be, adhering to the good-old-boy Senate model merely helps the other side and outrages our side.
Its time for the Senate GOP to wake up – in its small minority its job is to ask the questions which expose the liberal agenda, offer up alternatives and in all activities point the way to how the GOP will govern once returned to the majority. The House GOP is very much getting its act together (but still has a long way to go), while the Senate GOP is still acting like its the majority needing too placate a strong, liberal minority in order to keep the meat-grinder of government running smoothly. Times have changed, Senate GOP…time to change with them.
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