NYT: A Teary-Eyed Rebel Defies Party Leaders (Voinovich)

A Teary-Eyed Rebel Defies Party Leaders
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: June 6, 2005


CLEVELAND, June 4 - Senator George V. Voinovich, the only Republican to speak out on the Senate floor against the president's nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations, brought an unusual show of emotion to his case. Mr. Voinovich choked up.

"I wanted my colleagues to think about this. That's why I got emotional," he said in an hourlong interview at his home here on Friday, when he grew teary-eyed three more times over other subjects. "My emotions are a little bit closer to the surface than maybe they should be," he said.

Coming the same week that Ohio's other Republican senator, Mike DeWine, split from party leaders to compromise with Democrats over the president's stalled judicial nominees, Mr. Voinovich's emotional appeal to block Mr. Bolton has set up a dual test of Republican leaders' ability to hold their caucus together.

In a news conference on Tuesday, the president affirmed his commitment on both fronts, mocking the judicial compromise and castigating the Democrats for delaying Mr. Bolton's nomination. And in Ohio, where a social conservative groundswell helped Mr. Bush win the 2004 election, the rebellions of its senators combined to draw considerable ire from Mr. Bush's conservative base.

"Criticizing and undermining the president weakens the war on terror," said the Rev. Russell Johnson of the Fairfield Christian Church in Lancaster, a leader of the Ohio Restoration Project, a conservative advocacy group borne out of the last election. "The two senators from Ohio have become the poster boys for the foreign press to beat up our president."...


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/politics/06senators.html


ON EDIT: The article states: "His tendency to cry, (Voinovich) said, developed in the years after his daughter Molly, 9, the youngest of his four children, was killed in a car crash in 1979."

...pleading has on the conservative republican mind set. The neo-conservatives in the senate won't change at all. Then of course there are the neo-conservative democrats who will need to watched as well.

What reason would they give for insisting Voinovich was "teary-eyed?"

Assholes. _{George W. Bush} might have easily written this himself.

They must take real courage from having an idiot bully as their leader.

It may be decades before they have their reputation back.

He had the chance to scuttle Bolton in committee, but chose party loyalty above what was good for the country. Then, he goes and cries that Bolton is bad for America.

Sorry, no sympathy. He could have stopped Bolton PERSONALLY, but didn't have the stones.

what he's saying. It's probably very hard for him knowing that the neocons are going to make sure he doesn't get another term in office.

If he cares as much as he claims, he should have voted to kill the nomination in committee. It was a bad call. His argument that he didn't have the place to stop other Senators for voting for or against Bolton is just plain wrong.

He'll be 74 when up for re-election in 2010.

I think the fact that he's speaking out is evidence he doesn't intend to run again or else he knows no one will remember Bolton by then.

"We'll all be dead." - George W. Bush

why didn't he kill Bolton's nomination when he held it in his hands?

Talk is cheap.

the Times should be ashamed.

Oh, and by the way, who gives a flying fuck what Rev Johnson thinks?

Oh yeah, the Times.

Clearly an attempt to undermine these two courageous Republicans
by making their strengths into a perceived weakness. Gannon is that you?

Ha! I'll bet Cheney loved this Voinovich quote:

In the interview, however, Mr. Voinovich said he supported the rest of Mr. Bush's foreign policy and had his interests at heart in his opposition to Mr. Bolton. "It is like kids," he said, laughing. "You do some stuff for them, and they don't want you to do it, but you do it anyhow."

Besides, he said, he believes that Vice President Dick Cheney has been the real force behind Mr. Bolton's nomination. "I think the major reason he is going there is because the vice president wants him to go," Mr. Voinovich said, arguing that Mr. Cheney had promoted Mr. Bolton for the nomination after he failed to become the deputy secretary of state.

to thwart the GOP, especially if the dem candidate is going to lose anyway