Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Oklahoma, finally got his confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday for administrator of NASA. The committee’s ranking member, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida set the tone with a merciless and unrelenting attack on Bridenstine’s character, accusing him of being an overly partisan politician, thus unsuited to be NASA administrator. Nelson, it should be mentioned, was not always so squeamish about politicians getting too involved with NASA. During the 1980s, as a congressman, he used his political muscle to grab a ride on the space shuttle.
Other Democrats were just as vicious, as Space News points out. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii pounded Bridenstine on climate change, suggesting that some of his past statements that were skeptical of the theory that human actions are causing the Earth to warm dangerously, were disqualifying. More than one Democrat repeated the long-discredited myth that 97 percent of climate scientists believe that climate change is real and a threat.
The congressman was also accused of being bigoted against LGBTQ people because of his past opposition to same-sex marriage, the position once held by Hillary Clinton and former President Obama. He was also accused of not liking women very much because of a vote against the Violence against Women Act, though the vote was on constitutional grounds. Bridenstine was said to be consorting with “hate groups” so called by the Southern Poverty Law Center. As the Columbia Daily Herald points out, the SPLC tends to be somewhat careless about what it labels as a “hate group.”
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