Remember the good old days, when the Republican Party was synonymous with "law and order" and national security?

Today, disorder and insecurity would be better descriptions.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., is currently endangering America's military readiness in the name of restricting abortion rights. Meanwhile, Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley is trying to deprive the FBI of a crucial tool against international drug trafficking based on the MAGA fantasy that the agency is out to get Donald Trump.

Voters — especially voters in Missouri, who will consider next year whether to give Hawley a second Senate term — should keep in mind whether they really want to reward these kinds of priorities.

For more than six months, Tuberville has unilaterally prevented the confirmations of more than 300 top military nominees, using the power that all senators have to indefinitely delay most legislation.

Tuberville's "holds," as they're called, aren't about the nominees' qualifications, but are in protest to the Pentagon policy of providing time and reimbursement to service members who have to travel for abortion care when they're stationed in states that have outlawed the procedure.

Those service members — a group the GOP used to support in virtually all circumstances — often have no choice in where they live, which is why the travel policy makes sense.

Since last year's overturn of Roe v. Wade, roughly half the states (including Missouri) have outlawed abortion within their borders. It would be a Kafkaesque injustice to force female soldiers to relinquish control over their own bodies based solely on where in America they happen to be stationed while serving their country.

Tuberville's continuing stunt has left top military posts vacant of Senate-confirmed leaders for the first time in U.S. history. Key leadership roles are "being performed by acting officials without the full range of legal authorities necessary to make the decisions that will sustain the United States' military edge," the civilian secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force warned in an unusual joint op-ed this week in The Washington Post (which is re-published on today's Post-Dispatch op-ed page).

Hawley's vendetta against the FBI is unrelated to Tuberville's stunt, but similar in this: Hawley is apparently willing to hamper, in concrete ways, the agency's ability to do its job in retaliation for what is at base a partisan political dispute.

Congress is considering whether to reauthorize a 2008 law giving the FBI the power to spy on foreign nationals in the U.S. Among key uses of the law is to gather intelligence on how the ingredients to make fentanyl get into the U.S. from China and other sources.

The law itself has long been controversial among Democrats. President Joe Biden and others are insisting that reforms must be put in place to prevent spying on Americans, something the agency admits happens but insists is accidental. It is an issue that must be addressed.

But Hawley's beef, like those of other Republicans, has looped in the GOP's unsupported and toxic claim that the FBI is specifically targeting Republicans. It's a claim that is fed by, and feeds, the MAGA belief that the federal probe into Russia's election interference, last year's court-authorized search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate and other legitimate FBI actions constitute a concerted deep-state attack on the former president.

"Why would we reauthorize it given your track record of abuse and illegal improper surveillance and political targeting?" Hawley asked during a hearing with the FBI in June.

That the agency has engaged in improper surveillance of Americans is well established — but the more explosive allegation of "political targeting" is baseless. That hasn't stopped Hawley's fellow Missouri Republican, Sen. Eric Schmitt, from expressing similar reservations about re-authorizing the law: "It's evident that the FBI has been weaponized, and it's far past time for reforms after the FBI has repeatedly used their power to go after political opponents."

No such thing is evident, and the repeated false claim of it from the right is not only deeply ironic (given the FBI's right-leaning history) but damaging to respect for law enforcement generally.

There was a time when members of the law-and-order party would have been more responsible in their rhetoric. But that was a far different party than the one aligned behind Trump today.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

Photo credit: israel palacio at Unsplash