Still A Non-STARTer For The GOP

Well, if you thought for a millisecond that the tax cut deal and DADT and even the surprise passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act last night was going to usher in a new era of bipartisan snuggle fun time in the Senate, I'm here to disabuse you of that particular notion as it looks increasingly grim for the START treaty.  Republicans are looking for political payback.

With some prominent Republicans angry over passage of legislation ending the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, the mood in the Senate turned increasingly divisive and Mr. Obama and Democratic lawmakers scrambled to hold together a coalition to approve the treaty.

Senator Harry M. Reid, the Democratic majority leader, moved to hold a vote on Tuesday to close off debate, saying, “You either want to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists or you don’t.” But the fate of the treaty, known as New Start, was complicated by a deadlock over government spending and the political subtext about whether the pact’s approval would rejuvenate a weakened president after his party’s midterm election defeat.

For the second day, Mr. Obama’s supporters defeated a Republican amendment that would have blocked approval of the treaty by the end of the year. But the 60-to-32 vote left them short of the two-thirds majority they will need for final approval, and the White House lost a Republican it had hoped would join them on the decisive vote expected later this week.

The debate on the Senate floor came hours after Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican leaders in the upper chamber, said they would vote against the treaty. While their opposition was not a surprise, the question was how aggressively Mr. McConnell in particular would lobby the handful of wavering Republicans who will decide the matter.

“I’ve decided that I cannot support the treaty,” Senator McConnell said on “State of the Union” on CNN. “I think the verification provisions are inadequate and I do worry about the missile-defense implications of it.” While the treaty was signed eight months ago, he said, “rushing it right before Christmas, it strikes me as trying to jam us.”

One Republican who had previously signaled willingness to support the treaty, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, suggested Sunday that he would not. Mr. Graham cited the sour mood engendered by Democrats forcing votes on other topics in recent days, including the bill on gays in the military that passed Saturday. “If you really want to have a chance of passing Start, you better start over and do it in the next Congress because this lame duck has been poisoned,” Mr. Graham said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. 

And Republicans are right back to the same idiotic arguments that they used during the health care reform debate:  that somehow this is "jamming it down the throats" of America as a last minute, unread cryptic mess even though the Senate has been discussing this treaty for eight full months now, and that Republicans want to "scrap it and start over".


It's clear the Republicans believe it's time to exact more concessions from the President and Democrats, and they are pretty confident that they will get them.  With the government now running on the fumes of short-term continuing resolutions and the Tea Party base livid that the Republicans haven't impeached Obama yet, the GOP has no choice but to say no to everything else.

We'll see if the Republicans stop acting like spoiled brats long enough to get this ratified.  As Sen. Kerry pointed out yesterday, this treaty has already been in Senate debate longer than the last three arms treaties with Russia combined.