The Congressional vote on whether to strike Syria will offer the best insight yet on which wing of the Republican Party — the traditional hawks, or a growing bloc of noninterventionists — has the advantage in the fierce internal debates over foreign policy that have been taking place all year.
Republican divisions on national security have flared over the use of drones, aid to Egypt and the surveillance practices of the National Security Agency, and the tensions have played out publicly in battles between Senator John McCain of Arizona, a former Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war, and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a libertarian-leaning freshman. Mr. McCain memorably called Mr. Paul and his compatriots “wacko birds,” and Mr. Paul suggested that hawks like Mr. McCain were “moss covered.”But those intermittent spats could pale in comparison with the fight over whether to attack Syria, an issue on which Mr. McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate, and Mr. Paul, a possible contender in 2016, will almost certainly be the leading spokesmen for their party’s two wings.
No, Jon, just like every other time there's a "division" in the GOP, the question is always settled over question: "Which position hurts President Obama the most?" That's all that matters to today's GOP. There will be a very large effort to work with anti-war Democrats (some of which don't have much of a problem with the whole "hurt President Obama" thing either) to get a majority to kill this in the House.
Unless you somehow think Orange Julius is up to the task of putting together enough Republican votes for an Obama win, in which case you really, really haven't been paying attention.
It may pass the Senate. It will go down in flames in the House.
Count on it.
1 comment:
poor congressional repubs. torn between their overwhelming desire to bomb the crap out of brown people and their knee-jerk reaction to piss all over anything obama suggests.
Post a Comment