McConnell’s failure theater on display with Iran treaty
State and local Republican leadership should have demonstrated at Grassley and Ernst Senate offices as well as Democrat Congressman Loebsack’s
Now here is a Senate LEADER
The Senate on Thursday blocked consideration of a resolution to reject Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. We say “the Senate” and not “Democrats” in spite of the fact that only Democrats voted to oppose the resolution because culpability is well tinged by Republican leadership’s complicity in essential ways. The most recent complicity, undermining the last political bulwark, was the Republican leadership’s power to effect how the resolution to be voted on was worded.
The procedural vote that was considered yesterday was in contemplation of a resolution of disapproval, the wrong approach to take. A motion to disapprove in this case is an aspect of failure theater warned about here and by others. Senate Democrats under McConnell’s failure rules for Republicans need only have 40 votes to successfully stop anything Republicans want to do through the filibuster. They need not actually hold the floor any significant amount of time as historically implied, they merely need to threaten to filibuster. That is essentially what the Democrats did, they announced a filibuster of a procedural vote toward the motion to disapprove Obama’s agreement with Iran.
However, if formulated by McConnell as a motion to approve, Reid’s Democrats would have been put in the position of having to muster 51 votes, which they did not have, rather than only 40 to sustain a veto of a disapproval question, which they had. Congressional approval is what is called for in the Corker (R) procedural framework, the earlier Constitutional atrocity enabled by Republican leadership, which as bad as it is, at east offered that tactical opportunity. Reports on Thursday were that House Republicans would vote on an approval resolution today, the tactically superior formulation.
The Corker procedural requirement of submitting the Iran matter for approval was negotiated with Obama. He may have gone forward without approval, showing perfidy once again. Actually he already had gone forward without any congressional process, but aspects of his deal with Iran involves lifting of sanctions which requires legislation, well at least in a non-Obama world, or one with an effective opposition party.
State and local Republican Chairman held press event at Loebsack’s Davenport office Friday. If the purpose was the urgency of stopping the Iran deal they should have stopped by the Senate offices of Grassley and Ernst and insisted that they move to get McConnell out of the way.
From the Quad City Times report:
At a small demonstration outside his congressional office in Davenport, Republican Party of Iowa chairman Jeff Kaufmann criticized the deal and Loebsack.
“This is a big deal,” he said. “We can’t put the genie back in the bottle. We are legitimizing their nuclear program.”
The only notice we received of the ~~ event~~ was passed on by the RNC Committeewoman from Iowa – Tamara Scott a couple of hours before the event. Nothing from Scott County Republicans offices.
Mitch McConnell has to go, both for the success of Republican initiatives and future electoral prospects.
R Mall with DLH
