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“Tone policing”
U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) Monday morning announced she will vote against President Joe Biden’s pick to head the powerful and important Office of Management and Budget (OMB), claiming she is uncomfortable with Neera Tanden‘s “temperament.”
Collins also claimed Tanden did not have sufficient experience for the job, as CNN reports.
Tanden has been president of the Center for American Progress for nearly a decade, and served within the Obama administration as senior adviser to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. She also served as associate director for domestic policy in the Clinton White House.
The Atlantic in 2016 also reported “Tanden was a key architect of the Affordable Care Act after serving as a top policy adviser for Clinton’s 2008 bid.” But it was her work drafting a public option for ObamaCare, later tossed, that may be the most threatening aspect of Tanden, not her “mean tweets.”
Indeed, Collins and Democratic Senator Joe Manchin both cited Tanden’s active and adversarial Twitter account as one of the main reason they will vote against her.
“Neera Tanden has neither the experience nor the temperament to lead this critical agency,” Collins said in a statement Monday. “Her past actions have demonstrated exactly the kind of animosity that President Biden has pledged to transcend.”
In a show of good will and a strong signal that she is very willing to work with Republicans, Tanden apologized many times for her tweets during her Senate Budget Committee confirmation hearing. She also deleted over a thousand of them.
Collins used that act of contrition as a weapon against Tanden, saying it “raises concerns about her commitment to transparency.”
Some of the tweets Tanden deleted?
These, about Senator Collins:
.@neeratanden appears to have deleted her tweets about Susan Collins, whose vote she’ll likely need for confirmation.
h/t @varadmehta pic.twitter.com/atwonFCaMb— KC Johnson (@kcjohnson9) November 30, 2020
But Tanden did not delete all her tweets about Collins. This is still up:
She is the worst https://t.co/Nwd1yhi8NG
— Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) September 26, 2018
Many are furious about what they see as Collins’ hypocrisy.
Susan Collins’ statement on Neera Tanden is beyond absurd. For four years, Collins barely made a peep over the most hateful, egregious, and violent remarks by Trump and his supporters. The idea that she would position herself as a moral arbiter regarding tweets is preposterous.
— Charlotte Clymer 🏳️🌈 (@cmclymer) February 22, 2021
Susan Collins voted to confirm Kavanaugh, who got red-faced on camera as he screamed about inflicting revenge on the country, and who made a six-figure debt vanish while on a fixed salary, an act of financial magic that remains unexplained to this day. https://t.co/tQaRiaQOgn
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) February 22, 2021
@SenatorCollins statement about a bunch of things she had been completely ignoring for the last 4 years that are suddenly important again, for some unstated reason. #mepolitics https://t.co/tU7OqElyFA
— A Republic, if you can keep it (@GlennMorin10) February 22, 2021
Susan Collins on Donald Trump withholding congressionally approved military aid to a besieged ally in an attempt to blackmail their leader to interfere in an election: “I believe he has learned from this.”
Susan Collins on Neera Tanden: “She hasn’t got the temperament to lead.”
— Morten Øverbye (@morten) February 22, 2021
So, @SenatorCollins suddenly has concern over someone’s tweets? https://t.co/2lbgQYBHr6
— Dr. Jason Cottrell (@DrJCottrell) February 22, 2021
So according to Susan Collins, a man who sexually assaulted someone and covered it up is fine to be a Supreme Court Justice.
But if you swear in a tweet, that’s just too much….hypocrite. https://t.co/J6ToAfp96l
— Liam Kent 🦞 (@l___kent) February 22, 2021
Susan Collins, longtime supporter of Known Polite Men Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump and Paul LePage, is once again deeply concerned about civility.
— Maeve Coyle (@maevemcoyle) February 22, 2021
“He’s a decent individual with a strong commitment to the rule of law. He’s a leader of integrity. I think the attacks against him are not well founded and are unfair.” Susan Collins at Jeff Sessions AG Nomination Hearings
— EPISODE 46: A NEW HOPE (@GScotttaylorva) February 22, 2021
Susan Collins, who didn’t bother reading T***ps tweets and excused T***p by saying he “learned his lesson,” suddenly reads someone’s tweets and doesn’t think someone can’t learn a lesson. Wonder why the change🤔
— Look here, Jack (@realworldrj) February 22, 2021
Susan Collins = still hypocritical trash. I don’t even care either way about Tanden, it is just the gall of it. Tone policing when she refused to do anything about the former President’s outright unfitness.
— graylola (@graylola) February 22, 2021
Hey @SenatorCollins remind us why you think Mick Mulvaney was qualified for OMB and Neera Tanden isn’t?
Remind us why you voted to approve manifestly unqualified DNI Ratcliffe?
— Ben_Franklin speaks by ventriloquist (@_Ben_Franklin1) February 22, 2021
It’s infuriating for Republicans to talk about temperament . Sen. Susan Collins wasn’t one of Donald Trump’s top supporters, but she supported a majority of his policy positions.
And Brett Kavanaugh had the temperament to serve on the Court?
Neera Tanden should be confirmed. pic.twitter.com/lgex6MoI5M
— Russell Drew (@RussOnPolitics) February 22, 2021
Image: Susan Collins with Brett Kavanaugh, who she voted to confirm to a lifetime appoint,kent on the U.S. Supreme Court
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