Is she a Republican attack dog, a Democrats' poodle or just playing politics the way it must done in Washington, D.C.?
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee's senior senator, has had her campaign's Twitter account suspended, been lampooned on "Saturday Night Live" and been criticized by the likes of singer Taylor Swift.
Her remarks about President Joe Biden and Democrats -- several of them made this year -- take no prisoners:
› "Woke is [Democrats'] favorite word, woke-ism is their favorite activity & they adhere to DEI and ESG like it's a religion. I think that's why 75% of this country think the country is on the wrong track."
› "If Joe Biden had his way, sports would be divided into a team of men and a team of folks who used to be men. On the anniversary of Title IX, this administration is doing everything in their power to erase women and girls from sports."
› "Democrats want your guns, your gas stoves, and your hard-earned money."
› "There are two tiers of justice in this country -- one for Biden and his allies and another for the rest of America."
But here is Blackburn teaming with Democrats to help save rural hospitals. And here she is working with liberal Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff on several pieces of legislation. And here she is again combining with other Democrats.
That's all in the first two-and-a-half months of 2023.
True, Blackburn is up for re-election in 2024, and she hasn't said she won't be seeking a second term. But all signs point to an easy win. The Cook Political Report and Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales have tabbed the race as "Solid Republican," and Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball has termed it "Safe Republican."
So the senator's bipartisanship just may be all in a day's work for a member of Congress who wants to get things done -- complain about the country's problems and Democratic president in public and work behind the scenes to pass legislation in private.
If that is Blackburn's modus operandi, it is no different from what several of her esteemed Republican predecessors eventually learned about the Senate.
"It's hard to get things done here without partners on both sides," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said of Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, with whom she often collaborated, upon his retirement in 2021. "And he has always been someone who is willing to stop and listen. And that's a critical part of getting things done."
"You are either going to do the right thing or you're not," former Sen. Fred Thompson said. "If you are politically tacking all the time, it makes life too long and too complicated."
"We are doing the business of the American people," former Sen. Howard Baker said in 1998, more than a decade after leaving the Senate. "We do it every day. We have to do it with the same people every day. And if we cannot be civil to one another, and if we stop dealing with those with whom we disagree, or that we don't like, we would soon stop functioning altogether."
Among Blackburn's more recent collaborations:
› Five Republican and three Democrats, all from Southern states, reintroduced the Save Rural Hospitals Act, legislation aimed to help curb the trend of hospital closures in rural communities by redefining the formula through which Medicare payments to hospitals are made based on their geographic differences in labor costs. According to the senator, 58 hospitals across the state would benefit from the change.
› Blackburn teamed with Ossoff on the Revising Existing Procedures on Reporting via Technology Act, which would make the reporting of online child exploitation and sex trafficking of children mandatory for electronic service providers, increase penalties for failure to report, increase the retention period for National Center for Missing and Exploited Children CyberTipline reports, enable minors and their parents to report online exploitation, and minimize access to child sexual abuse images during intake and investigations.
› Blackburn and Ossoff also have worked together to sound the alarm with the Department of Veterans' Affairs on challenges veterans face when seeking mammogram services, which help detect early signs of breast cancer. According to the National Library of Medicine, female veterans -- of which there were more than 47,000 in Tennessee in 2020 -- were nearly three times more likely to develop invasive breast cancer than the rest of the population.
› Blackburn also worked with U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, to help the Senate passage of the Fighting Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Act of 2023, which would require reports on evidence-based treatment programs for first responders across the country, similar to services available to military personnel who develop PTSD or acute stress disorders; with Sen. Gary Peters, D-Michigan, on the Securing Semiconductor Supply Chains Act, which would help develop strategies to attract investment in U.S. semiconductor manufacturers and supply chains; and with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, to seek answers on Pinterest's practices for identifying and removing sexually suggestive material harmful to young users.
For a public that may not appreciate that anything bipartisan ever gets done in Washington, D.C., we're glad Tennessee's senator in showing a different side of politics and leadership.