It’s a constitutional requirement that two-thirds of the Senate vote to ratify any treaties that the U.S. government signs. The New START Treaty has the votes to pass in this Congress but probably does not in the next, which will have six more Republicans. That’s why it is important to ratify the treaty in the current lame-duck session of Congress. This isn’t really a controversial treaty. It’s supported by the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar (R-IN), as well as former Republican Secretaries of State Condoleeza Rice and Henry Kissinger. It has the support of the Joints Chief of Staff, and Bush-appointed Defense Secretary Robert Gates. In other words, regardless of party, those in the Establishment responsible for our diplomacy and national security are fully supportive of the president’s efforts to enter into this arms-reduction treaty with Russia.
Yet, the Republican leadership in the Senate has decided to scuttle the treaty. Matt Cooper reports in the National Journal that Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona has betrayed the White House.
On Tuesday, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., declined to support a vote in the lame-duck Congress on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START. Because Republicans had designated Kyl as their lead negotiator with the administration on the treaty, his opposition makes the measure all but impossible to pass in the newly elected, more Republican Congress that takes office in January…
…Kyl’s opposition caught the White House by surprise. They believed that they had secured his support through promises to enhance the country’s nuclear arsenal. The flatfooted reaction doesn’t bode well for the upcoming session, in which the administration will need keen intelligence on who stands where.
The New York Times has more detail on the betrayal:
…the White House strategy had hinged entirely on winning over Mr. Kyl, and Democrats, who began scrambling for a backup plan, said they considered the chances of success slim…
Both parties had considered Mr. Kyl the make-or-break voice on the pact, with Senate Republicans essentially deputizing him to work out a deal that would secure tens of billions of dollars to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons complex in exchange for approval of the treaty.
Over many months of negotiations, the administration committed to spending $80 billion to do that over the next 10 years, and on Friday offered to chip in $4.1 billion more over the next five years. As a gesture of commitment, the White House had made sure extra money for modernization was included in the stopgap spending resolution now keeping the government operating, even though almost no other program received an increase in money.
All told, White House officials counted 29 meetings, phone calls, briefings or letters involving Mr. Kyl or his staff. They said they thought they had given him everything he wanted, and were optimistic about completing a deal this week, only to learn about his decision on Tuesday from reporters.
This is a continuation of the Party of No Strategy and completely redolent of Chuck Grassley’s antics that I wrote about yesterday. It is further proof that the Republicans think they can destroy the president by denying him any accomplishments and making him look impotent. But, in this case, there is a cost to the country.
The Kremlin did not respond to the development, but Russian officials have expressed fear that Republican victories in this month’s midterm elections would damage relations. “We don’t have confidence that the document will secure enough votes,” Konstantin I. Kosachev, chairman of a parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said earlier in the day, according to the Russian news media. “The problem is not that the document is bad. We are confronting the fact that Republicans refuse to ratify the treaty.”
Mr. Obama had assured President Dmitri A. Medvedev during a meeting just two days earlier that winning approval of the treaty was his “top priority” in foreign affairs for the lame-duck session. If he cannot, it may embolden hard-liners in Moscow who have been skeptical of the so-called effort to “reset” the relationship with Russia.
If there is a silver lining to this carwreck it is that it is (in poker terms) an unmistakable tell. The GOP is not cooperating on anything, even on the most obvious and ripe measures for bipartisan support. They are in full annihilation mode. It’s good for the White House to get that message now, before they make any more miscalculations based on an underestimation of the Republicans’ willingness to act in bad faith.
A good analysis until the last sentence. If the White House hasn’t understood what the Republicans’ mode has been after two years we are not dealing with sentient beings running the Executive Branch. To expect that Obama will now “get the message” is a self-imposed naivete being used to avoid a nastier truth.
“They are in full annihilation mode. It’s good for the White House to get that message now, before they make any more miscalculations based on an underestimation of the Republicans’ willingness to act in bad faith.”
Gotta go with Bob on this one. Communication of information is two-sided. The Republicans have been clear since, oh, 1998, that they have no interest in bipartisanship. Their policy is scorched earth partisanship. But the Democrats who need to receive, process and act on this information just don’t want to get it. Indeed, they blame themselves. I never bought the battered wife metaphor until that press conference.
But even if Obama did understand Republican intentions now, so what? His time to be able to accomplish anything good is almost over, and Democratic leadership is not going to risk one bad cable news cycle in the lame duck session. Republicans impeached Clinton after being repudiated at the polls, but we can’t risk someone saying something mean about us by playing hardball for once. So, we have to count on the fact that the Senate is slow and rule-constrained to forestall the full disaster until 2013.
what bob said.
after grassley (and healthcare in general), mcconnell’s “one term” comment, and everything else, how is it that the White House is still learning this lesson?
i thought Obama was supposed to be super-smart. Why does this keep happening?
i will bet a dollar we’ll see this come up yet again. they’re not learning anything.
You are exactly right- its just a continuation of the Party of No strategy. Our government is so dependent on cooperation and compromise that nothing can really get done without the GOP. Its shocking that our elites are generally OK with this, but here we are.
Its time for recess appointments, heavy regulation of carbon by the EPA, anything that the executive can do by itself, it needs to do. We’re way past the point of no return on bipartisanship.
By now this doesn’t even surprise me.
Chuck Todd interviewing Orrin Hatch this morning where Hatch started down the road of how this couldn’t be ratified with just a couple of weeks’ notice and that the times of Pelosi and Reid jamming things through were over…Todd responded, ‘But Sen, this was done and in your hands last June!’ Hatch responded that ‘Yeah, well, we haven’t had a chance to have the sites verified’ Todd responded, ‘But Sen, START 1 accomplished that’
Without pushback from the MSM, they’ll be able to spin this back to a problem with the Dem bullies that their Fox listeners are already broken in with.
Chuck Todd actually pushed back against a GOPer? Everyone in Texas better watch out. It’s going to snow there tomorrow.
that’s what made it so memorable, it was a first
With control of the house, unlimited corporate money at their disposal thanks to the Roberts court, the tea party shock troops under their control, the most popular cable news channel doing their bidding, , and 18th century political institutions that were designed to subvert the people’s will, the GOP is in control right now. They can do what they want, when they want it and how they want it.
Post-partisanship is dead and I fear that the only person in the country who didn’t get the memo is Obama.
I think Obama honestly equates “leadership” with partisanship and he’s post-partisan.
“They can do what they want, when they want it and how they want it.” Only as long as the “real” media allows them to do it. And the “real” media’s chosen narrative following the midterms is that Obama failed to act in a bipartisan manner, a narrative constructed without regard to a fully public record of planned obstruction by the republicans from the very first moment.
I simply don’t know how a bully pulpit works if the media consistently transmits transparent lies by the republicans. What could Obama possibly do, what could he possibly say, that the media won’t dilute and minimize with he said she said reporting? I’m quite serious here. He has frequently spoken out, but the media either doesn’t carry it, or they carry it balanced by republican lies or, worse, balanced by a conservaDem saying Obama needs to cooperate with rethugs.
Everyone who reads Booman understands this and I suspect accept it to be true. I’m waiting for someone here to offer a solution more thoughtful than “he just needs to get louder” because that doesn’t work.
Its not that complicated. Break off discussions on Tax cuts. Give press conference where you say on Jan 1, bush tax cuts will expire, they didn’t work, they created more inequality and they caused huge deficits. that era is over and government needs to learn from its mistake. Then hold up a bill that you are introducing to congress (lame duck or the next) that cuts taxes for eveyrone up to 250,000. Everyone gets the tax cuts, millionaires alike. Say you are taking the additional revenue and investing in education, infrastructure, clean energy- all the things that made the middle class and this country great.
Im not trying to overstate the value of the bully pulpit. But the bully pulpit and just plain practicing the art of politics are not the same thing. Obama needs to go on offense. I’m not saying he needs to “talk louder” I’m saying he needs to “do something” other than capitulate to Republican demands. I don’t think that’s crazy, but apparently it is.
If I believed the “real” media would accurately transmit any of this, or if the conservaDems wouldn’t destroy any possibility of effective political messaging, I would agree.
send word that any conservadem that sabotages a president from his own party is no longer welcome in that party. make an example of one of them and watch the rest fall in line. if losing one to the GOP is what it takes to send the message, so be it.
You’re right that that’s the media narrative, but “bipartisan” to them means nothing other than giving the Republicans everything they want. What’s ridiculous id for Obama to keep (predictably) playing along with narrative and publicly “regretting” (I put it in quotations, but he may well be sincere about this) that he HASN’T BEEN BIPARTISAN ENOUGH? I mean, what the hey? So what if he’s not bipartisan, this country’s got some serious work to do, and you’re never going to change the narrative anyway. This is what is getting to be weird. You could have thought it was the “rope-a-dope” strategy, but even if it was that it didn’t work. and if you stay on the ropes too long there comes a point where you really get hurt.
Paycheck Fairness Act failed cloture vote in U.S. Senate, 58-41 like 10 minutes ago.
I see those famously good-for-women moderates Snowe and Collins voted with their caucus….
Why did the Whitehouse get this message 20 months ago? It was just as obvious then.
Rolled against and again.
the Obama Administration between now and 2012, is for Barack Obama to get a serious PERSONALITY ADJUSTMENT. Obama has left enough evidence that his personality is so passive that it is almost embarrassing. Early on in his presidency when he made his first visit to Russia, with the video cameras rolling he endured an outlandish diplomatic snub. As he was moving through a greeting line of Russian dignitaries shaking each man’s hand as he passed along the line, one man refused to shake his hand and looked scornfully into Obama’s face as Obama stood there with his hand extended. In the midst of that embassing moment, any other president of the United States would have pivoted an walked out on the meeting, leaving the bigoted Russian to pay the consequences for his disrespectful action. Not Obama. Instead he sighed and straightened his shoulders and continued moving down the greeting line and went on with the meeting.
Since this was Obama’s initial meeting with the Russians there was nothing of diplomatic importance on the table and actually the exclusive purpose of the meeting was to honor the new American president. So an Obama walkout in response to the deliberate offensive snub would have been well within protocol. But Barack Obama is Mr. Nice guy to the end.
The Republicans have pledged ALL OUT WAR against Obama. They are so bold to have announced that they intended to bury the White House Administration in a “blizzard” of subpoenas continuously over the next two years. Yet in the midst of this loud and very public braggadocio Obama continues to play the role of the faithful old dog who always returns for another beating at the hands of his master. The Republicans intend to try and “wear out” all of the key departments of the Executive with endless rounds of petty investigations meant to continuously drag members of Obama’s Cabinet departments and staff before hostile partisan House panels. This will a replay of “McCarthyism” confined exclusively against the Obama White House.
The attacks against the Obama Administration will not only be increased, but will also get even more nasty in terms of racist remarks but in terms of the unsupported lies that the Republicans will use to support their witch hunts. From my perspective the majority of the new tea party congress people consider themselves to be ONE TERM Representatives whose only mission is to hound the Negro out of the White House.
Survival for President Obama is to recognize this fact and govern himself and the Executive branch accordingly. President Obama has an awesome amount of power if becomes smart enough to use it. To quote an old english saying, “there are always some stain in everyone’s knickers”. Mr. President you have the agencies within the Executive that are capable of keeping these new anti-obama Congress folks busy worrying more about their laundry than continuing to harassing you and your department.
However, Mr. President if you fail to get that personality adjustment then you have my sincere pity for what you will have to endure over the next two years.
peace….
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