Shelby; Way to Make the Democrats Cry, Dude!

I am getting a real kick out of the hold Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) has placed on Lord Falderal’s nominations for a lot of reasons. While it is true that I love political theatre in any form, I particularly love it when it is entirely misconstrued, misunderstood and mis-communicated by the press.

There is a mechanism in the Senate that allows Senators to put holds on Presidential nominations especially in the case of a perceived intense preference by the President to a particular nominee. The mechanism actually allows a single Senator to put holds on as many nominations as he/she feels necessary. Holds happen all the time, usually one at a time. Senator Shelby has decided to invoke his right to hold up all 70 of Lord Falderal’s pending nominations.

Most of these nominations are, well, nominal to say the least. Very few are actually important and the President does have a remedy to the situation. He can actually temporarily appoint his nominees and have them formally take their jobs at a later date.

Senator Shelby is being cast as the poster child for Republican obstructionism by the Falderal administration for making this bold and unprecedented move. Headlines in the Washington Post like; America Taken Hostage, Day 1, have been the norm for just over a week now. What the Falderal Administration and Senate Democrats are insinuating is that Shelby’s hold is bad for America because it has put a stop to any forward motion for any legislation in the pipeline for the last year, including health care reform.

Shelby’s motivation for placing the holds is he wants earmark spending for his State fast tracked. The Democrats are calling foul as this maneuver represents pork barrel spending in their eyes. Well, they would know, wouldn’t they? They are trying desperately to use their own philosophy on pork as a weapon against Shelby and the Republicans by saying that R’s have been consistently against earmarks since Christ was a Corporal in the Footguard, and therefore should back down on these holds.

True enough.

However, let’s consider a few things here.

First, what are the earmarks Shelby is looking for? The good Senator is looking for dough that would go directly to funding our country’s defense. The FBI is seeking to build a lab for improvised explosive device testing in Alabama, the state Shelby represents. Something Team Falderal has spent the last year trying to kill.

The other pet project of Shelby’s is a little stickier. There is a $40 billion dollar contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers at a Northrup facility in Mobile. The company has threatened to bail out on Alabama unless the Air Force makes some changes to a draft request for proposals. One would assume, a change that would benefit Northrup in the bidding process.

Both of these programs are good for the country and are job intensive, meaning unlike most of Falderal and Senate Democratic programs, there will be job creation, a lot of it.

What Shelby is doing is his job, representing the State he was elected in and the people who elected him by looking out for their best interests. He is taking action, something Senate Democrats certainly know nothing about.

One of the responses taken by Falderal and the D’s is an investigation into Shelby’s campaign contributions. Well, lo and behold, the defense contractors mentioned above were major contributors. Is that somehow surprising? Are we 14 years old here? Of course, his contributions were heavy on the contractor side. Where is the big story?

What the Democrats are really whining about is their power and platform being pulled out from under them. Perhaps they should reconsider their own actions in the past year and apply them to the Shelby situation.

We wouldn’t be in this mess had Falderal kept to his word and fostered an environment of bi-partisanship after taking the train to the White House. Instead what he fostered was an air of power that due to the super majority in the Houses made him and his partners in the axis of evil, Pelosi and Reid, feel as though they could do anything they wanted. The problem with this is they read the public wrong and forced upon their constituents’ legislation they never wanted as evidenced by the whole Scott Brown situation.

Falderal’s attempt to garner Republican partnership after the State of the Union was too little too late. Had Falderal listened to what the other side had to say throughout the year, perhaps he and us, the American people, wouldn’t be in such trouble.

Shelby isn’t holding the country hostage at all. What he may actually be doing is saving us from this dysfunctional Government that can’t get out of it’s own way. Maybe forcing the shut down of the Senate is a good thing, or at least crippling it until the mid terms so we can get some new blood.

It’s time for the Falderal Administration and the bags of dung they drug along with them into the Houses to wake up and start playing ball. If Falderal was smart, he’d fire everyone on his staff and start over with qualified professionals from both sides of the aisle. But he’s not, as was clearly indicated at the State of the Union. So, we will have to wait until next year when guaranteed come Hell or high water, there will be new faces sitting in those chambers. Let’s just hope they are not as dumb as this batch.