The Patriot Post® · Obama Cunningly Gets His Way With Iran Charade
Now that Senate Democrats managed to muster enough votes to filibuster the Iran nuclear “deal” — meaning there won’t even be a vote — the agreement, as expected, is being implemented. Via Charles Krauthammer, here’s a review of how we got here — and how Republicans bowed to Barack Obama’s cunning tactics:
“As a matter of constitutional decency, the president should have submitted the [Iran nuclear] deal to Congress first. And submitted it as a treaty. Which it obviously is. No international agreement in a generation matches this one in strategic significance and geopolitical gravity. Obama did not submit it as a treaty because he knew he could never get the constitutionally required votes for ratification. He’s not close to getting two-thirds of the Senate. He’s not close to getting a simple majority. No wonder: in the latest Pew Research Center poll, the American people oppose the deal by a staggering 28-point margin. To get around the Constitution, Obama negotiated a swindle that requires him to garner a mere one-third of one house of Congress. Indeed, on Thursday, with just 42 Senate supporters — remember, a treaty requires 67 — the Democrats filibustered and prevented, at least for now, the Senate from voting on the deal at all. But Obama two months ago enshrined the deal as international law at the U.N. Why should we care about the congressional vote? In order to highlight the illegitimacy of Obama’s constitutional runaround and thus make it easier for a future president to overturn the deal, especially if Iran is found to be cheating.”
As Fred Fleitz explains in National Review, this Obama victory isn’t a victory at all:
“The Iran deal is so unpopular not just because Americans believe it is a bad deal but because of the perception that the president went around Congress and our Middle East allies. While President Obama has said that ‘many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal,’ he has neglected to mention that President Bush obtained congressional buy-in for the Iraq War when Congress passed, on a bipartisan basis, the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002 authorizing the invasion of Iraq. Then-senators Biden, Kerry, and Clinton voted for that resolution. By contrast, there is no Republican support in the Senate for the Iran deal. … Since the Iran deal is an executive agreement and not a treaty, it is not legally binding on the United States or on President Obama’s successor. The fact that it apparently will survive a congressional review because of a Senate filibuster further undermines its legitimacy. If a Republican wins the 2016 election, I am hopeful he or she will tear up this agreement on his or her first day in office. But even if this agreement is torn up by a Republican president on January 20, 2017, it will still do considerable damage to American and international security.”
In the end, it wasn’t just the Constitution that got trumped, but our future as well. As Sen. Tom Cotton somberly stated:
“Political fealty to President Obama’s hoped-for legacy in foreign affairs means this dangerous deal will likely move forward, despite the overwhelming and bipartisan opposition to it in Congress and the clear will of the American people. … History will remember this stunning display of partisan loyalty and willful blindness. And it will remember this Senate as the one that — when given the chance to stop the world’s worst sponsor of terrorism from obtaining the world’s worst weapons — blinked when confronted with that evil.”
Addendum: The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto wryly notes, “The deal is assured of ‘approval’ despite overwhelming public opposition. A Pew poll released Tuesday finds only 21% of respondents favoring the deal, with a near-majority (49%) in opposition and 30% offering ‘no opinion.’ In July, 33% approved and 45% disapproved. The poll’s oddest finding is that 30% report having heard ‘nothing at all’ about the deal. That’s up from 21% two months ago, suggesting either sampling error or widespread dementia.”