Obama nominee for defense likely to get confirmed: top Republican
Source: Reuters
A senior Republican senator said on Sunday that party colleagues will drop tactics to delay a vote on former Senator Chuck Hagel to be defense secretary, saying that President Barack Obama's nominee likely has sufficient support to be confirmed into this key post.
"We will have a vote when we get back, and I am confident that Senator Hagel will probably have the votes necessary to be confirmed as the secretary of defense," Arizona Senator John McCain, who has led the opposition against his former Republican colleague, told NBC's "Meet the Press" program.
Democrats, who control the Senate, have scheduled a vote for February 26, after members return from a week-long recess. Republicans held up the nomination last week in a delay characterized as the first time the Senate had used a procedural tactic called a filibuster to block a defense nominee.
With Democrats holding 55 votes in the 100-seat Senate, Hagel's nomination is expected to win the simple majority of 51 votes needed for his confirmation to become the civilian leader at the Pentagon, once such a vote is allowed.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/17/us-obama-nominations-hagel-idUSBRE91G0AW20130217
It is just amazing that the media does not hold Republicans like Ted Cruz accountable for attacking a Republican, decorated Vietnam War veteran as being an Iranian sympathizer and filibustering such a nomination. If Democrats engaged in such filibusters with similar frequency the media would be going crazy.
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his first act should be to call up McCain and Graham to active duty and send them to someplace where there are no TV shows to appear on Sunday mornings.
