WASHINGTON ? Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked a vote to confirm Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, arguing that they needed more time to consider.
By 58-40, with one abstention, the Associated Press reported that the Senate fell short of the 60-vote threshold required to advance Hagel's nomination to a final, up-or-down vote on his confirmation. Four Republicans voted with Democrats to end the debate and proceed to a final vote: Sens. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Mike Johanns of Nebraska.
Obama reacted immediately, hammering Republicans for an unprecedented filibuster of a defense secretary nominee and insisting that Hagel, a former two-term Republican senator from Nebraska and twice-wounded Vietnam combat veteran, will eventually win confirmation. He would succeed Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who is stepping down.
?It's just unfortunate that this kind of politics intrudes at a time when I'm still presiding over a war in Afghanistan and I need a secretary of defense who is coordinating with our allies to make sure that our troops are getting the kind of strategy and mission that they deserve,? the president said in an online chat sponsored by Google.
In the final minutes of the tally, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., switched his vote from ?yes? to ?no,? a procedural move that allows him to revive the nomination after the break. He set another vote for Feb. 26.
Republicans said they intended to allow a vote on their former colleague when the Senate returns from a break in 10 days.
?Republicans have made an unfortunate choice to ratchet up the level of obstruction in Washington,? said Sen. Reid.
All day, a tense standoff played out in the Capitol as one party tried to force the other into a more politically undesirable position.
Republicans, aware that Democrats would not relish calling a vote that could result in an embarrassing setback for the president, had hoped to press Reid to back down and reschedule after the Senate returns from its recess.
Democrats, mindful that Republicans didn't want to be blamed for making what would be seen as an affront to a sitting president, allowed a vote knowing that it might fail and accused their colleagues of hitting a new low of obstructionism.
At 10 a.m. Thursday, after the Republican leadership signaled to Democrats that it intended to seek a further delay, Reid said he would wait no longer and set the vote for this morning. But just after 3 p.m. Thursday, he came to the Senate floor to move that it be called instead at 4:15 p.m.
That forced senators like John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, veterans of the Senate Armed Services Committee who have said that they find the act of filibustering a defense secretary distasteful, to cast a vote that had the same result as a filibuster, even if they refused to call it that.
Republicans said they would not support ending debate until they received more detailed answers to questions about the administration's response to the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. Specifically, they want to know whether Obama spoke with anyone in the Libyan government to request assistance during the attack.
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