Lindsey Graham is rapidly becoming the go-to Republican for whiny quotes. He is upset with the productivity of the lame duck session (ignoring that all this was pushed to the lame duck because of Republican obstruction). He said this about the collapse of the unified GOP blockade:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is not happy about the recent productivity of the lame duck Congress, and blamed the GOP for allowing it to happen. “When it’s all going to be said and done,” he said on Fox News Radio today, “Harry Reid has eaten our lunch. This has been a capitulation in two weeks of dramatic proportions of policies that wouldn’t have passed in the new Congress.”
“I stand here very disappointed in the fact that our lead negotiator on the Republican side … basically is going to have his work product ignored and the treaty jammed through in the lame duck. How as Republicans we justify that I do not know,” Graham said. “To Senator Kyl, I want to apologize to you for the way you’ve been treated by your colleagues.”
Yes, the Senate should apologize to Jon Kyl for ignoring his dishonest actions about what is and isn’t in the START Treaty. Perhaps Senators are listening to every living Secretay of State and military leaders instead?
Slate explains how Republicans picked a fight on START and why they lost.
There were two kinds of opponents in this debate. The first had concerns that President Barack Obama would use the treaty as an excuse to ease up on missile defense and the programs to maintain the nuclear arsenal. In recent weeks, Obama and his team did as much to allay these concerns as any hawk could have hoped—and more than many doves preferred.
AdvertisementSo that left the second kind of opponent: those who simply wanted to deny Obama any kind of victory. The latter motive was clearly dominant in this debate.
To get the treaty ratified, it needed 67 votes in the Senate, so that means 9 Republicans had to vote for it. Republicans kept using the rhetoric they’ve used for almost all the good bills they have been blocking – “ramming it down our throat,” “haven’t had enough time,” “Senate procedure,” etc. to run out the clock. Nevermind that the treaty was signed in April and is all of 17 pages long (plus many, many hearings). The Negotiating team simply went around the self-appointed lead negotiator – what else can you do when he is a dishonest hack?
For reasons that nobody can quite explain, Kyl had managed in the past few years to cut a profile as the “go-to” Republican on all matters nuclear. The conventional wisdom was that if Kyl endorsed the treaty, it would pass; if he didn’t, it wouldn’t.
And so, the White House and the Pentagon sent high-level emissaries to Kyl’s lair during the Senate’s recess to negotiate a deal, offering, among other enticements, an extra $4 billion, on top of the $80 billion already committed over the next decade, to “modernize” the nuclear-weapons infrastructure.
Kyl took the goodies but came out against the treaty anyway. So Obama and his aides did something no legislative powerhouse should ever let happen—they went around him, treating him as just another senator, and they won.
Kyl limps away from this face-off gravely wounded—a leader unable to deliver either on his promises or on his threats.
McConnell also comes out of this looking pretty ineffective. The narrative in the Washington media has already changed to how effective Obama is at passing legislation. I hope this is a preview of the fights to come. I imagine that the so-called moderates were worried about commercials in their home districts about how they valued party over country. Kyl’s problem was that this was good and important legislation and that blocking it would have very bad consequences. There may be more battles like this to come – there will be a lot of high-stakes brinksmanship in the next Congress and we’ll find out whether Republicans are more scared of teabaggers or everyone else.