For those softening on Jeff Flake, here’s a stern reminder that he is a party-line, hard-right Republican:
– Trump nominates a grossly unqualified NASA administrator.
– Jeff Flake thinks this is a good opportunity to show how independent of Trump he is. And he’s right; in the scheme of things, not confirming Trump’s NASA nominee is very minor. It involves little of Republican ideology and it’s not like it’ll be hard to find a Republican in the community of actual qualified people to nominate instead. Plus, they don’t need Flake’s vote anyway.
– except through a quirk of voting, they do need his vote, so they tell him to vote yes. And as far as we can tell, he immediately changes his vote, without anything like an explanation.
- This nominee is terrible. Under pressure at his confirmation hearing in November, Mr. Bridenstine agreed that humans are the driving force behind climate change, but he would not agree with the assertion that human activity is the primary cause of it. It’s a ridiculous position to hold as the leader of an agency that provides some of the most comprehensive data on climate change in the world.
- Bridenstine appears to be another kleptocrat with no experience managing a large budget and misusing funds for the small budget he was responsible for in Tulsa
- His record on LGBTQ issues is horrendous — how many good scientists will NASA lose because of this?
Someone tell us another about how Flake is a “moderate” Republican.
Source: Trump’s next NASA administrator is a Republican congressman with no background in science, Vox.