One has to wonder what historians are going to write about this presidency and whether this particular political knife in the back will have been the final blow.
The White House has been "blindsided" by the announcement -- it "shocked and angered" them. The gravity of one senator's decision will mean little to the underinformed voter, but to the rest of us -- those for whom foreign policy is as important or more vital than domestic policy, the decision of the Republicans, in the person of Senator Jon Kyl, to kill or at least delay a vote on the arms treaty with Russia, is not very far from trading one's country's welfare for short-term political gain.
Both parties had considered Mr. Kyl the make-or-break voice on the pact, with Republicans essentially deputizing him to work out a deal that would secure tens of billions of dollars to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons complex in exchange for approval of the treaty. After months of negotiations and the addition of even more money in recent days, the White House thought it had given Mr. Kyl what he wanted.
While the White House intends to press for a vote in the next weeks anyway, many Republican senators who had indicated that they would vote for the treaty had made their support contingent on Mr. Kyl’s assent. Mr. Reid had likewise resisted bringing the treaty to the floor until Mr. Kyl was satisfied. While Democrats said Tuesday that Mr. Reid was prepared to keep trying, they held out little hope.
This doesn't help America's credibility overseas.
A failure to approve the treaty in the departing Senate could undermine Mr. Obama’s broader campaign to curb nuclear weapons and eventually eliminate them. The treaty, which would trim American and Russian strategic arsenals and restore mutual inspections that lapsed last year, was supposed to be the first, and easiest, step in a long-term effort to bring an end to age of nuclear arms.
It could also sour Mr. Obama’s two-year effort to “reset” ties with Russia and win greater cooperation from Moscow in areas like counterterrorism, transit routes to Afghanistan and pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear program. Mr. Obama vowed to pass the treaty during a meeting with his Russian counterpart, President Dmitri A. Medvedev, in Japan on Sunday, and is scheduled to see him again later this week at a NATO summit meeting in Lisbon.
If Mr. Obama cannot fulfill that promise, White House officials worry that it will diminish his credibility with world leaders and embolden hard-liners in Moscow who have long expressed skepticism about the rapprochement with Washington – among them, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, who allowed Mr. Medvedev to pursue the warmer ties despite his own doubts. ...NYT
It seems unlikely that the new Senate, with more Republicans, will step up to the bat on this matter anytime soon, if ever. Once again, the spurious excuse of "national security" is being used. God save us from national security as defined by Republicans!
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The perpetual "no" vote doesn't mean Obama's initiatives won't be passed in the future. I think what we're looking at is a replay of Republicans voting down popular Democratic initiatives and then reframing them as Republican initiatives and claiming full credit. In fact, I'd be willing to bet on it.
