A growing chorus indicts GOP intransigence (updated)

[Reposted, with additions from David Frum, Chuck Hagel and John Danforth. The list of testy-moany-yowls groweth apace.]

Sometimes the charge is leavened with a little bit of obligatory false equivalence -- or alternately, tinctured with partisan outrage. But left, right and center, in this election season of taking stock, a number of seasoned observers are stepping back for a global view of the hyperpartisanship and bad-faith obstructionism that Gingrich brought to Washington and that has become the Republican m.o.

One strong screed of this sort is Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein's 4/27 Washington Post op-ed Let's just say it: the Republicans are the problem, a foretaste of a book they've just published on "the problem."  [Update: David Frum writes of Mann and Ornstein: "Both men have hard-earned reputations for nonideological independence" - link at bottom.] Their brief:

Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.

A growing chorus indicts GOP intransigence

Sometimes the charge is leavened with a little bit of obligatory false equivalence -- or alternately, tinctured with partisan outrage. But left, right and center, in this election season of taking stock, a number of seasoned observers are stepping back for a global view of the hyperpartisanship and bad-faith obstructionism that Gingrich brought to Washington and that has become the Republican m.o.

One strong screed of this sort is Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein's 4/27 Washington Post op-ed Let's just say it: the Republicans are the problem, a foretaste of a book they've just published on "the problem."  [Update: David Frum writes of Mann and Ornstein: "Both men have hard-earned reputations for nonideological independence" - link at bottom.] Their brief:

Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.

Lugar's noble sign-off, leavened with false equivalence

Richard Lugar's statement issued last night in the wake of his primary loss to Tea Party candidate Richard Mourdock will be rightly celebrated as warning and diagnosis about the dangers of extreme partisanship. At the same time, in perhaps inevitable loyalty to his own side, Lugar raises false equivalence to a high art:

Unfortunately, we have an increasing number of legislators in both parties who have adopted an unrelenting partisan viewpoint. This shows up in countless vote studies that find diminishing intersections between Democrat and Republican positions. Partisans at both ends of the political spectrum are dominating the political debate in our country. And partisan groups, including outside groups that spent millions against me in this race, are determined to see that this continues. They have worked to make it as difficult as possible for a legislator of either party to hold independent views or engage in constructive compromise. If that attitude prevails in American politics, our government will remain mired in the dysfunction we have witnessed during the last several years. And I believe that if this attitude expands in the Republican Party, we will be relegated to minority status. Parties don't succeed for long if they stop appealing to voters who may disagree with them on some issues...

Profiles in cowardice, courage, and a little bit of both

Noting that as the dam breaks in favor of the New Start treaty, many Republicans now seem, in Rich Lowry's words, to be lining up to get on "the right side," Kevin Drum interprets:

In other words, a big chunk of the Republican caucus has known all along that New START was a good treaty but was holding out for strictly partisan purposes. If it had been close, and giving Obama a black eye had been a serious possibility, they would have voted no. But with that option gone, they're willing to vote yes. It's a real profile in cowardice.

That may be a little too cold.  There is still a choice to be made, and a month ago, Richard Lugar framed it for his fellow Republicans with brutal clarity even as he steeled Democrats' nerves for a showdown.  Immediately after Jon Kyl's bid to simply take New Start off the Senate calendar for this year -- assuring that it would never pass -- Lugar said:

"At the moment, the Republican caucus is tied up in a situation where people don't want to make choices," Lugar told reporters in the hallway of the Capitol building Wednesday. "No one wants to be counted. No one wants to talk about it."....

Rip Van Kyl

Jon Kyl wants to reduce Russian and U.S. nuclear stockpiles and resume mutual nuclear monitoring between the two countries. I know, because I just visited the Senator's website:

Moreover, Russia has not been particularly helpful in the ongoing talks to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) – which expired last December – with a follow-on agreement.  START, considered by many to be the most important nuclear arms reduction treaty in history, dramatically reduced the number of nuclear warheads in the U.S. and Russian arsenals, and provided the means for each country to effectively verify the other’s nuclear activities.

With the expiration of the treaty last year, the United States and Russia have lost key means to monitor one another’s nuclear forces.

Good news, Jon! A New START treaty has been negotiated, which, according to your party's foremost in-office expert on nuclear proliferation, provides for a fully adequate inspection regime, will further reduce stockpiles on both sides, and will have no effect on U.S. missile defense development. Oh wait..

Putting a Lugar to Jon Kyl's head

One gets wearily accustomed to Republicans destroying the country's financial viability with enormous tax cuts for the wealthy and skillfully defending those tax cuts to the (fiscal) death. As the ideological embodiment of the personal financial interests of the wealthiest 1% of Americans, that's what they're hired elected to do.

There's more than garden variety opportunism, however, in Jon Kyl's attempt to spike a vote on the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty in the lame duck session.  The administration has negotiated for months with Kyl, the Republican point man on this issue, and accommodated virtually all of his mostly bogus and mercenary demands for more spending on nuclear modernization and expanded commitment to missile defense.  In a reprise of Republican tactics in the healthcare battle, Kyl solemnly declared that a vote before year's end is not feasible, "given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex and unresolved issues related to START and modernization." To delay the vote until next year, when the Democratic majority shrinks from 59 to 53 and a whole new round of hearings would be required, is to kill the treaty.

No one needs me to make the case for a treaty supported by seven former commanders of U.S. Strategic Command, six former secretaries of state, five former defense secretaries, and a partridge in a pear tree. In brief, New START gets U.S. weapons inspectors back into Russia,  it continues the nuclear force reduction in an equitable manner, it gives both countries nonproliferation credibility, it has enabled and will continue to enable U.S.-Russian cooperation on vital issues such as restraining Iranian weapons development, and it unquestionably leaves the U.S. free to pursue that probably worthless Republican shibboleth, missile defense.  End of story. Only cranks, crackpots and Kyle vile opportunists oppose it.  In support, see George Schultz, Madeline Albright, Gary Hart and Chuck Hagel here, Brent Scowcroft here, Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton here, Henry Kissinger here, and thirty foreign policy grandees from both parties here.  (Opposed: a notorious war criminal and Dr. Strangelove.)


Initial reports suggested that Kyle's opposition would effectively kill the treaty. But I am heartened. Some antibodies remain in the system.  A full-court press is on. Gates, Clinton, Kerry, Lugar. In particular, Lugar's pressure on fellow Republicans -- and direct bid to put some spine in Obama and other Democrats -- seems vital: