“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President [Barack] Obama to be a one-term president,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced after the midterm elections.  Perhaps you were under the impression McConnell’s statement was just hyperbole; his vindictive sentiment, mere posturing for the benefit of the GOP’s reanimated right wing.  If so, this business with Republicans screwing around with the START treaty should put that thought right out of your mind.

From the moment the president signed the nuclear arms reduction pact with the Russians, Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), have “kept moving the goal posts…”

Max Bergmann briefly laid out the history of Kyl’s delay tactics within his Nov. 16 Wonk Room post.

…Last summer, Kyl was whining immensely that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) was rushing the process and that a committee vote should not happen until after the August recess. After the SFRC delayed, Kyl spoke to Reuters who paraphrased Kyl:

It could be difficult to satisfy his [Kyl's] demands before November and thus the vote on New START might need to take place during the lame duck session if the Senate wants to vote on the treaty this year…

The vote was delayed, and Kyl’s demands were met, but…

In September, after the SFRC did hold its vote, Kyl and Senate Republicans argued that having a vote before the election was impossible because it would politicize the process and that a vote should happen after the election…

Predictably, now that the election has passed, Kyl and Republicans say there isn’t enough time in the Senate calendar.

Of course, for Kyl and the Republicans, that was the plan all along, as it has been with every White House initiative since Obama took office.  Playing this game with foreign policy commitments, however, has broader implications than it has with domestic legislation.

The consequences are already presenting themselves.  Steve Benen, author of Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog, has been on this all week.  Regarding the risks Republicans are running, Benen wrote (11/17), “They expect this to hurt the foreign policy power of the United States, but they’re fine with that since there’s a Democratic president…” (emphasis added)

When it comes to Russia, inspection of the country’s long-range nuclear bases will remain suspended indefinitely; the country’s hard-liners will be emboldened; and Russia’s willingness to cooperate with U.S. on Iran or on Afghanistan will likely disappear.

But in the bigger picture, countries around the globe will see this as a reminder that negotiating with the United States is pointless, since the country is burdened with a Republican Party that puts partisan hatred above the country’s interests. It hurts American credibility in ways that are hard to even gauge.

Indeed, and as Matt Cooper noted in his Nov. 16 National Journal post, another bilateral agreement – a trade pact with South Korea – initially failed, in part, because “Seoul’s concern about ratification prospects in the Senate.”

Fortunately, there still a chance that Senate Democrats will force a vote on START before the next Congress.  If they do, it will be interesting to see whether or not the Republicans blink.  Only one elected Republican, Indiana Senator Dick Lugar, has called on his party to put national security before politics on this one, and numerous other non-elected officials from both sides have done the same.

I’d like to think Sen. Lugar isn’t the lone Republican voice of reason in the Senate.  Optimism, however, is difficult to muster when there are others, like Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), who seems to relish the opportunity to poke the Russians with a stick.

Take Action–> Urge Senators to Support Nuclear Arms Reduction

(This post was originally published on Care2.com’s Political Causes Blog, 20 November 2010)

This clip from The Onion is from November 2009.  If someone had told me then that the GOP would have made the gains that they did in the 2010 midterms, I would not have believed them.

Actually, Republicans should consider Zombie Reagan for their leadership.  If I learned anything from the 2010 midterm results, it would be that the only demonstrably functioning appendage of the GOP is its propaganda/fundraising wing.  Whether or not they’ll be able to actually govern remains in serious doubt.

From the looks of their freshman class, the famed Republican unity-of-message, lockstep discipline is a thing of the past.  Their leadership is in for a frustrating experience, akin to what the Democrats dealt with during the last Congress (noteworthy exceptions being the complete lack of empathy, and despite the inherent contradiction, a lot more Jesus).

Zombie Reagan?  They could do worse.

(WARNING:  Some will find the video to be disturbing and/or offensive…)

Zombie Reagan Raised From Grave To Lead GOP

Chicago Tribune Editorial Cartoonist Scott Stantis perfectly captures the Tea Party/GOP dynamic which came into clearer focus this week.

Scott Stantis ~ 'Tea Party' ~ 16 Sept. 2010, Chicago Tribune

For the most part the script for Elana Kagan’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee had already been written.  Historian Joseph J. Ellis described the scene well nearly two months ahead of time:

These hearings have become highly partisan affairs over the past 30 years, and given the recent closed-ranks posture of the Republican opposition, we can expect all the sharp-edged political weapons to be deployed against the nominee. The chief weapon will be the claim that Supreme Court justices should interpret the Constitution as it was written, not impose their political or personal convictions on the semi-sacred text. Woe to the nominee who has left a paper trail that deviates from the original intentions of the Founders, or what a hostile Senate interrogator defines those intentions to be.

The RNC, for their part, telegraphed their Party’s intentions for the hearings in advance.  As noted at The Hill, May 10, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee would focus on Kagan’s DADT position at Harvard, and her 1993 speech before the Texas Law Review in honor of Justice Thurgood Marshall.

… She quoted from a speech Marshall gave in 1987 in which he said the Constitution as originally conceived and drafted was “defective.”

Marshall cited in particular the definition in the original Constitution to slaves as representing three-fifths of “free Persons” when counting the nation’s population. That reference was rendered moot after the Civil War with the ratification of the 13th and 14th amendments abolishing slavery and granting full citizenship to all people born in the U.S.

True to form, the GOP contingent led by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) proceeded to frame Marshall as a “liberal activist” –   the same Justice Marshall whose work on behalf of the NAACP in 1954 helped facilitate the end of segregation, later serving as U.S. Solicitor General, elevated to the Supreme Court during the LBJ administration.

Interestingly, when asked later, Senators Sessions, Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Tom Coburn (R-OK) were unable to list a single instance of “judicial activism” perpetrated by Marshall.  But their strategy wasn’t about making a sustainable legal argument; rather, Republican criticism of Marshall turned out to be yet another sounding of the dog whistle intended for their base who, apparently, lament the outcome of Brown v. Board of Education – Stay classy, GOP!

Fortunately Senator Al Franken (D-MN) was on hand to set the record straight on two counts.  Watch the below clip, snipped by firedoglake.com, as Franken elevates the term “judicial activist” out of the meaningless context in which it is so often used, successfully defending Marshall’s legacy in the process.

Within his assessment of the “Judiciary Committee Winners and Losers,” Harper’s Contributing Editor and legal expert Scott Horton highlighted Franken’s performance:

…I applaud Al Franken. Not only did he provide an alternative point of interest during slow points with his skillful doodling, Franken also proved himself an astute student of the Republicans. For years, they have used confirmation hearings to take their digs at their least favorite judges and judicial policies. Franken has responded in kind, taking a deep look at the Roberts court’s strange biases in favor of business and against labor and its innate hostility to business regulation. Who are those “activist judges” that Sessions complained about? Franken makes a persuasive case that they’re precisely the judges Sessions is so wild about: John Roberts, Sam Alito, Nino Scalia, and Clarence Thomas.

Back from his vacation, Stephen sends up Senator Jim “Creme” DeMint (R-SC) and his “Waterloo” meme.  DeMint articulated what became the Republican strategy to “break” Obama by defeating the administration’s effort to reform health care in July, 2009.

Now that the Democrats have successfully passed reform, DeMint has taken to pushing back the goal posts, telling Face the Nation‘s Bob Schieffer that the true test of the GOP’s cynical strategy will come with the results of the 2010 midterm elections.

Stephen, of course, has some fun with DeMint’s assessment: