Enough Feting of Fetterman
Imagine a purely theoretical U.S. senator who just voted against a limited voter ID bill, even with the proof of citizenship provisions of the SAVE Act stripped out.
Without any exceptions, he voted to confirm the entire rogue’s gallery of Biden judicial nominees (close to 140) who have consistently thwarted the Trump agenda. By contrast, he voted to confirm fewer than 10 percent of Trump’s judicial nominees.
Not satisfied to just vote “No” on the Big Beautiful Bill, he thundered “Hell No!” in the roll call. Most recently, he voted against the nomination of Todd Blanche for Attorney General.
Further imagine that this theoretical U.S. senator has an approval rating of 77 percent from Republican voters in his home state. I know, it strains credulity.
OK, forget about the “imagine” and the “theoretical.” The senator is John Fetterman of Pennsylvania.
From the halls of the National Review to the shores of Commentary, the plaudits and praises of Fetterman come showering down, but has the purportedly conservative media gotten carried away?
The conservative punditry’s rapprochement, followed by an outright lovefest with Fetterman, is a product of his opposition to invocations of the War Powers Act against Trump and his support for Israel.
Multiple GOP senators, including Majority Leader John Thune, have said they would welcome him into their party, even with an ideology whose face only a childless cat lady could love.
Part of the reason that the besotted amour for Fetterman is so galling is that we have been through this before, specifically with Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut senator who was liberal enough to get nominated as Al Gore’s running mate.
While never doing anything to stain his liberal bona fides, Lieberman later supported the Iraq War, which earned him the enmity of many in his party and resulted in a particularly gooey bromance with John McCain, who came close to choosing as his running mate a man with a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 15 percent.
After Lieberman lost the Connecticut Senate Democratic primary in 2006, he ran for re-election as an independent. Republicans foolishly bought into it, flocking to Lieberman and awarding their own nominee with less than 10 percent of the vote.
Lieberman rewarded them by caucusing and voting with the Democrats, including an outcome-determinative vote on Obamacare.
The Fetterman situation is starting to track the Lieberman precedent to an uncanny degree, and it is too easy to envision that 77 percent approval among Pennsylvania Republicans translating into votes that will re-elect Fetterman as an independent who caucuses and votes with the Democrats.
Loyal Republicans will be subjected to a choice between Fetterman and a Democrat, with the GOP nominee left in the dust.
When sentient, Fetterman has proven irascible and impulsive, and when not sentient, he has proven … insentient. He should not be as welcome in the Republican cloakroom as he is in the Fox News green room.
His voting record says it all. Leopards do not change their stripes, or change out of their hoodies.
Enough feting of Fetterman.
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