Bob Dole is a creature of the U.S. Senate and he knows it well.
The former Kansas Republican lawmaker – and two-time nominee for national political office – says the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body is “badly bent” and needs repair.
Do you think?
Dole spoke on Fox News Sunday today and lamented what’s happened to the body he used to lead as its majority leader. He decries the Republicans’ use – or misuse – of the filibuster, complaining that the Senate now needs 60 votes to pass virtually anything.
Dole once was considered a Republican bad boy, mean-spirited in the extreme. As a vice-presidential nominee on a ticket headed by President Ford in 1976, he once referred to all the deaths that occurred during “Democrat wars.” Twenty years later, as his party’s presidential nominee, Dole had softened his approach a bit, but not much while losing that year’s election in a near-landslide to President Clinton.
Now, though, he’s an elder statesman, part of what the tea party wing of his party calls the “establishment wing” of the Republican Party. He well might become a target for the GOP insurgents who have taken joy in knocking off its partisan elders.
He ought to be taken seriously as one who has served his country with valor in war – and suffered grievous battlefield wounds in the process – and with distinction and honor as a U.S. senator.