This is not George Voinovich.

.

And his name doesn’t rhyme with “crying little bitch.”

I think invocations of Hitler when discussion John Bolton are tasteless and inappropriate and generally both miss the point and undermine one’s position. However I think it is entirely appropriate to look at how real, actual leaders react to moments of crisis..especially when they have gone on the public record clearly on one side of an issue…and extra special especially when it comes down to their decision and their decision alone that will tip the balance.

So let’s take Churchill. Had been on the public record as violently opposing the rise of Nazism in Germany and openly expressing his contempt and hatred for Adolph Hitler. And when the decisive moment came, when the fate of the Empire was in his hand’s, Churchill acted decisively and completely in accordance with him own public statements.

So let’s look at a couple of George Voinovich's public statements about John Bolton:

This from Tuesday’s WaPo:

Voinovich Asks Senators to Reject Bolton
By ANNE GEARAN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 24, 2005; 10:40 PM
….
"In these dangerous times, we cannot afford to put at risk our nation's ability to successfully wage and win the war on terror with a controversial and ineffective ambassador to the United Nations," Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, wrote to all 99 other senators. "I worry that Mr. Bolton could make it more difficult for us to achieve the important U.N. reforms needed to restore the strength of the institution."
Voinovich first forced a delay in Bolton's confirmation last month and then brokered an unusual compromise that sent Bolton's nomination to the full Senate without the customary recommendation from a Senate committee.
Voinovich echoed Democratic objections to Bolton, saying his conduct and temperament make him ill-suited for a sensitive diplomatic post. Voinovich planned to make a lengthy case against Bolton on the Senate floor

And this from the full transcript of what Senator Voinovich had to say before the entire Foreign Affairs Committee (via Think Progress)

Mr. Chairman, I have to say that after poring over the hundreds of pages of testimony and – you know, I wasn’t here for those hearings, but I did my penance, I read all of it – I believe that John Bolton would have been fired if he’d worked for a major corporation. This is not the behavior of a true leader who upholds the kind of democracy that President Bush is seeking to promote globally. This is not the behavior that should be endorsed as the face of the United States to the world community and the United Nations. Rather, Mr. Chairman, it is my opinion that John Bolton is the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be.

Clear enough what he thinks, yes? Bolton would be a foreign policy disaster. Clear as a fire bell in the night.

And who knows, but perhaps Senator Voinovich was also thinking that our foreign relations have already been freighted with the several Mothers Of All Foreign Policy Disasters courtesy of the lying thugs who now run our government? T hat the Special Olympics Theocracy of George Bush has managed to piss away over 200 years of respect and admiration carefully husbanded by centuries of careful work, as well as turn a surplus of global sympathy after 9/11 into a massive deficit of global hatred and mistrust…all in five short years!

A brief aside while I look on in horrified wonder.

Wow.

Arbusto Boy strikes again…but this time on an epic scale, and this time it’s not Daddy that will have to cover this fucktard's losses but you and me, for generations to come. And Preznit Nuculer will wander away from the wreckage he created and into the history books scot-free and unsinged. And one day soon history will look back on the serial catastrophes that define the Presidency of Bush 43 and wonder how how in the fuck did the vicious, detached, dry-drunk, water-head retard get away with being a vicious, detached, dry-drunk, water-head..right out in front of everybody.

History will answer thusly; a craven, pliable-as-a-crack-whore press corps, a formidable propaganda machine that masqueraded as journalists, a rabid army of hatemongering True Believers, a plague of stupid abroad in the land, fear and patriotism and the relentless, perverse exploitation thereof by Karl Rove for raw partisan purposes…

…and the likes of cowardly, Vaseline-spined Moderates like Voinovich who steadfastly refuse to see that their own party has become the implacable enemy of everything they claim to believe in. Who will come right up to the brink of principle in word only...and then collapse in a heap of maudlin, self-pitying tears every time.

Jesus Christ, when will these gutless little Tubeworm Republicans in the media and in the Congress wake up and smell the boiling pitch? Your Party is not about principle anymore! Not about a code of conduct. Not about “uniting not dividing.” THAT is as dead as Dillinger. Gutted like a trout. Hollowed out and replaced by something dark and cancerous and brutal and crazy-drunk on power.

Come on, I know you live in Senateland, but how have you failed to notice how anyone who fails to bend a deep knee to Dear Leader gets shredded at the slightest provocation?

How are principled Moderates treated by the GOP?

Just take a look at this snip of transcript from the ad by odious and entirely typical Move America Forward. Also please note their frighteningly easy use of Nazi rhetoric.

Wife: Honey, were you watching C-SPAN today? Did you hear how disloyal Senator
Voinovich was to Republicans and President Bush? Voinovich stood with the Democrats and refused to vote for John Bolton, the man President Bush has chosen to fight for the United States at the UN

Husband: No, I was streaming it on the Internet at the office, but from what I could tell, Senator Voinovich played hookey from the hearings?

Wife: Yeah that’s right. He’s missed most of the Bolton confirmation hearings, but then shows up at the last minute and stabs the President and Republicans right in the back.

Now look at how Churchill handled the hard decisions when they came his way. Look at Coventry.

When Winston Churchill was told that his people had broken the Nazi Enigma Code, the knowledge came with a terrible price: it came with the certain the knowledge that the city of Coventry was going to be bombed and that scores – perhaps hundreds – of people would surely die. Churchill could have saved them, but only at the cost of tipping off the Nazi spies that their code had been broken and losing a critical strategic advantage that he would need down the stretch.

The moment of crisis came, and Churchill decided that sacrificing the city was worth winning the war, so he let the bombers come.

Voinovich was not called upon to make any such life-and-death decision. He sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, which has ten Republicans and eight democrats.

Now every day most of us make decisions based on what we think the best course of action might be, but most of us have a severely limited span of control, and can affect small this somewhat and the course of large events very little at all.

Unless of course we are in the United States Fucking Senate.

A person usually works their whole adults life and runs for the Senate on the basis that, yes, they DO know best. Their opinion CAN be trusted. That after considering all the facts, that they WILL act as a proxy for the millions of people back in their home state – of all political parties – and that will exercise their best, most honest judgment. In fact, that’s pretty much the whole fucking job, Senator.

And if you choose to sit on the Foreign Relations Committee – where votes kill or bless initiatives every day – you have chosen to weigh in on matters of foreign policy. That’s what committees are for, you imbecile, so if you didn’t want the job and the hard decisions that go with it, Senator, you shouldn’t have take it.

Because on a 10-8 committee, his one vote would have made it 9-9 and terminated John Bolton’s nomination right then and there. The Bad Man would have been stopped dead in his tracks right then and there.

But what did Voinovich actually do? Well, why not let him speak for himself:

“That being said, Mr. Chairman, I’m not so arrogant to think that I should impose my judgment and perspective of the U.S. position in the world community on the rest of my colleagues. We owe it to the president to give Mr. Bolton an up-or-down vote on the floor of the United States Senate. My hope is that on a bipartisan basis we can send Mr. Bolton’s nomination to the floor without recommendation and let the Senate work its will.”

Not exactly soaringly Churchillian is it?

He seems not exactly clear on the fact that every vote a Senator takes – win or lose – in some way imposes his or her will on the world, which is what the people charged you to do for them when they elected you.

That’s “Voinovitch”.

Rhymes with “cowardly little bitch.”