His prolific use of a bill-blocking measure earned him his nickname, but he also won grudging respect on Capitol Hill as a political maverick.

 

Tom Coburn was an obstetrician who treated some 15,000 patients and delivered 4,000 babies in a maternal and family practice in Muskogee, Okla., before embarking on a political career — three terms in the House of Representatives (1995-2001) and, after a four-year hiatus, two terms in the Senate (2005-15). He retired two years before the end of his second term because of deteriorating health.

 

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I write this post with equal measures of trepidation and admiration. While I deeply disagree with much of Dr. Coburn’s agenda, I can’t help but respect his principled conservatism – and his wicked wit.   Quoting at length…

 

A visceral foe of Washington long before such disaffections coalesced into the Tea Party, Mr. Coburn swept into Congress with the class of 1994, when Republicans gained control of the House for the first time in 40 years and installed Newt Gingrich as speaker and his “Contract With America” agenda to shrink government, cut taxes and promote welfare reforms and business activity.

Mr. Coburn soon set about displeasing everyone, including the constituencies most politicians covet: his own party’s activists, donors, leaders and congressional colleagues. He battled with Mr. Gingrich often, charging that he was drifting to the political center away from his contractual pledges to the nation. He openly vented his disdain for career politicians.

“His contempt for them is genuine, bipartisan and in many cases mutual,” a reporter said years later. “He once prescribed a ‘spinal transplant’ for 70 percent of the Senate, and another time said his colleagues had ‘reproductive organs the size of BBs.’”

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For the sake of smaller government, he voted against nearly all spending bills, particularly pork-barrel allocations for legislators’ pet projects.  Opposed to gay rights, same-sex marriage, embryonic stem-cell research and abortions except those to save a woman’s life, he also denied that global warming was real. He favored term limits for elected officials and pledged to abide by them himself.

A gun rights supporter, he favored the death penalty, even for doctors who performed abortions. He wrote laws aimed at protecting infants from AIDS and expanding medical care for the elderly. Also, he helped reform welfare and other federal entitlement programs, and led workshops for young staff members on sexually transmitted H.I.V. infections.

 

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He was notorious for using a procedural senatorial privilege, called a hold, with which a single senator could block bills from being voted on by the full Senate.  At first his obstructionist tactics were relatively innocuous. He blocked two 2007 bills honoring the 100th birthday of Rachel Carson and her landmark 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” which documented the environmental effects of pesticides. Mr. Coburn called the book “junk science” and “the catalyst in the deadly worldwide stigmatization against insecticides, especially DDT.”

Later bills blocked by Dr. Coburn included provisions for health care, penalties for child pornography, and protections for natural resources. Senate business was dragging to a crawl under the tactical loophole he was exploiting.

In 2008, to expose and embarrass Dr. Coburn, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, introduced 35 of the most irresistible-sounding bills together as “omnibus legislation.” It was a benign collection that almost any senator would be ashamed to vote against:  A Mothers Act to relieve postpartum depression.  A Protect Our Children Act to thwart internet predators.  And a shameless measure to commemorate “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Tom Coburn put a hold on the package, which was mocked as the “Tomnibus” bill. He did not back down. Neither did Senate Democrats.  The struggle lasted two years.  It came to a head when he put a hold on a bill to fund the disarming of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a Ugandan terrorist group that had massacred countless civilians and dragooned children into its ranks. After an 11-day round-the-clock protest outside Dr. Coburn’s office by people outraged that funds to suppress terrorists were being held up, he relented and the bill passed.

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Recalling other unlikely friendships between political opposites like the one between Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the Coburn remembrance concludes this way:

 

While he never drifted from his conservative convictions, Dr. Coburn forged a friendship in Washington that was as unlikely as it was enduring. Arriving in the Senate together in 2005, he and Barack Obama quickly bonded.  Shortly before he retired, Dr. Coburn said of Mr. Obama: “I think he’s a neat man. You don’t have to be the same to be friends. Matter of fact, the interesting friendships are the ones that are divergent.”

 

 

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In a partisan day and age  when it’s hard enough to find a pol in either party with at least two neurons to rub together, let alone one who’s a “principled ANYTHING,” it’s refreshing to hear of one with enough good sense and grace to befriend an opposite number on the other side of the aisle.  RIP, Tom Coburn. I say with equal parts lament and concern:  We’re not likely to see your equal in D.C. again any time soon. And more’s the pity.

 

Full story for those who need more is here.