Kyrsten Sinema is ready to singlehandedly save the Senate again

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) thinks she can solve a problem that no one else has been able to.

The out bisexual Senator from Arizona is working behind the scenes (but in front of the press) to find a way out of the blockade that Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has created for military promotions. Tuberville has put a hold on the high-level promotions that require Senate approval to protest the Biden administration’s pro-abortion policies for military personnel. (Tuberville also blamed his hold on a gay poem.)

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She even got Clarence Thomas’s “friend” Harlan Crow to max out to her campaign. She’s saying she can win next year.

With hundreds of military promotions languishing for months, even Republicans have tired of Tuberville’s antics, which have zero chance of impacting policy. After trying to reason with Tuberville behind the scenes, his fellow Republicans let their anger spill out into the open earlier this month as they pressured him to drop the hold on more than 370 promotions. Tuberville refuses to budge, however.

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Sinema is planning a workaround by proposing that the promotions be passed as a group rather than individually. Because of the arcane rules of the Senate, it’s virtually impossible to circumvent Tuberville’s holds because of the amount of time involved in clearing each individual promotion.

Sinema has clout with Republicans because she helped kill efforts to eliminate the filibuster, another arcane Senate tradition that has been used (most recently by Republicans) to ensure that a majority of senators don’t get any work done. In the course of protecting the filibuster, Sinema killed LGBTQ+ protections as well as a lot of President Joe Biden’s agenda. She so enraged Democrats that her decision to leave the party was all but inevitable.

Even now, Sinema is tiptoeing around Tuberville’s grandstanding.

“I still hope not to have to use a resolution” to quash his protest, she told Politico. “The best way for this to be resolved is for Coach to choose a hostage that is appropriate.” (Tuberville was previously a football coach.)

Even with Republicans complaining about Tuberville’s stunt, they are still reluctant to take action against him. Even Sinema says she doesn’t have a timeline, letting the promotions continue to pile up despite the warnings that the open positions are creating a security risk.

If Sinema thinks that solving this issue will give her a boost at the polls, she probably has another thing coming. The most recent poll has her trailing in a three-way race with Rep. Ruben Gallegos (D-AZ) and Republican Kari Lake, garnering a paltry 17%. (Sinema hasn’t announced if she’s running for re-election yet.)

Then again, Sinema may not care. According to Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-UT) new memoir, Sinema, who is not known for her humility, believes “I saved the Senate by myself. That’s good enough for me.” She also thinks it’s the ticket to any job she wants.

“I can go on any board I want to. I can be a college president. I can do anything,” she reportedly told Romney.

Except win the respect of voters.

Editor’s Note: This piece originally misidentified Sinema as a Republican. She is an independent who was formerly a Democrat.