Special Report: Tuberville’s Sinister Plot

The Key Thing the Right Learned from the Last Coup Attempt

Our analysis indicates that Alabama Senator Tuberville’s hold on military promotions is not at core a cynical ploy to force the Pentagon to change policy regarding service member abortion availability, another opportunity to “own the libs,” or more red meat for the Republican base. 

Rather, it is a strategy intended to leave the senior military positions unfilled through the next election cycle so that incoming President Trump can fill them with supportive military officers.  The Republican ecosystem learned its lessons from Trump’s previous failure to overturn the government.  They determined that a more compliant military is necessary to achieve their strategic objectives, and Tuberville’s actions give them their best opportunity to rapidly seize control of the military.

You will notice that Republicans have made no secret of their strategy to seize control of the non-DoD Federal Agencies with their Project 2025 plan.  The reason they keep the military plan secret is that there are many Republican officials and voters who could not bring themselves to support it proactively.  This same group, though, is much more likely to support the plan after it has been executed and buttressed by Presidential actions such as a declaration of martial law, and the subsequent backing of the Supreme Court. 

As a former military officer and career government national security official, I realize that such a conclusion sounds more like a plot from a Robert Ludlum thriller than a legitimate intelligence estimate.  The stickiest part of this hypothesis concerns the miliary officers themselves, bound as they are to the Constitution and not the President.  It is hard to believe that enough would go along with this plot to make it viable. 

Except that the officer corps has become riddled with Fundamentalists and Evangelicals, as we’ve written about previously.  Quick personal anecdote: When I was in the Army, one of my superior officers (boss) showed me his “walk on water” performance review. By the way, it’s an infraction on the military to share reviews, but hypocrisy has become the defining characteristic of Evangelicals and Republicans.  His review read, and I quote: “(My boss’ first name) is a fine Christian Gentleman.”  That was the only written comment from the Colonel evaluating my boss, and he well knew how favorably this would be received by promotion boards.  By the way, it is also an infraction to mention religion in performance reports.

That was 38 years ago, and the dynamic has gotten worse since.  The percentage of Evangelical military officers doubled between 2000 and 2015.  And the Southern Baptist Convention (Fundamentalists) has been quite successful with its strategy to overpopulate the military chaplain corps.  There are now six times as many Protestant chaplains per Protestant service member in the military than there are Catholic priests per Catholic, for instance.    

An unfortunate result of the decision to go to an All-Volunteer Military, more than half of the military is drawn from the Southern States that collectively constitute only 37% of the population. And this is not the whole story – most recruits are drawn from a very small number of rural and conservative southern counties. The trend is self-reinforcing. In the “up or out” military where regular promotion is the only guarantee of retiring with a pension, anecdotes like the one I told about my boss quickly force more liberal officers “into line.”  

The military tilt towards Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism is an underappreciated fact and underreported trend.  I could only find one 2005 New York Times article addressing this subject, and I had to conduct 12 Google searches to locate this relevant article that I remembered from previous research.

All that said, this is brilliant tactics as well as strategy, because it is a “can’t lose” issue for Tuberville and Republicans.  If the Senate works around Tuberville it adds to his and the party’s long list of grievances, and it bogs the Senate down.   Estimates are that the workarounds would consume the Senate’s time and prevent all meaningful legislative activity.  And if Trump isn’t elected, Tuberville (or Useful Idiot #2) just keeps it up, with no one the wiser!

Tuberville’s purported objective is disguised by a brilliant cover story.  It’s totally plausible that a Republican would want to reduce the number of abortions and to prevent taxpayers from covering the cost.  The Republican base has already bought into the propaganda purposes of Tuberville’s actions, and with Fox News and the closed communications network Republican voters participate in, they’ll never even hear our analysis. 

Worse, the mainstream press has bought Tuberville’s story hook, line, and sinker, and they won’t report on our analysis or figure it out on their own until well after anyone can take meaningful action. Thus, even most progressives won’t understand the most sinister implications of Tuberville’s hold until it’s too late. 

Tuberville is an anti-American asshole, but we’re the chumps in this story.  Southern Senators have been holding our country for ransom since its inception, and we’ve collectively done nothing to hold them accountable or fix the problem.  Illuminating the real story is a responsible first step on the path to accountability, but we’re going to need to really “light ‘em up” as we said in the Army, to effect real change.