Republicans are crossing a dangerous new line: sabotaging US foreign policy
Updated by Max Fisher on March 9, 2015, 11:14 p.m. ET
@Max_Fisher max@vox.com
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House Speaker John Boehner shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after his speech to Congress Win McNamee/Getty
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Throughout Barack
Obama's presidency, Republicans in Congress have deployed a strategy
that has worked remarkably well for them: oppose, obstruct, and sabotage
the Obama administration at every turn.
"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President
Obama to be a one-term president," Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, then
the Senate minority leader, said in 2010.
A few months later, McConnell acknowledged that Republicans had
decided to deny President Obama any bipartisan support, not because they
necessarily opposed each and every initiative, but to hurt Obama
politically. "We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these
proposals," he said.
"Because we thought — correctly, I think — that the only way the
American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the
measures were not bipartisan."
This strategy led Republicans to adopt largely unprecedented tactics
of obstructionism and sabotage. But no matter how far they went, there
is one line they have always avoided crossing: undermining US foreign
policy.
That line is now being crossed. Republicans, driven by earnest
policy disagreements with Obama over his approach to Iran, are bringing
the tactics they used to undermine Obama's legislative agenda into the
previously sacrosanct realm of foreign policy.
"the GOP are blazing new trails in politicization of foreign policy — and debasement of their institutions"
Republicans are not just overtly sabotaging Obama's Iran policy, but
his constitutionally enshrined authority over foreign policy. This is
unprecedented. If the trend continues — Republicans have already
extended their efforts to Obama's relationship with Israel — it
endangers not just US policy toward the Middle East, but the very way
that the United States makes foreign policy.
The possible implications for the United States and its role as global leader should worry Americans of every political stripe.
Republicans are adapting the tactics they used against legislation like Obamacare to Obama's foreign policy
Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Geneva, where nuclear
negotiations are being held (RICK WILKING/AFP/Getty)
Until now, for all the tactics of obstruction that Republicans used
against Obama's legislative agenda, they generally treated foreign
policy as sacrosanct. They got close only once before,
when they threatened to block Obama's 2010 nuclear disarmament treaty
with Russia. But they backed down when foreign policy graybeards from
Henry Kissinger to Colin Powell told them to knock it off.
Republicans, after all, tend to prize America's role as the
world's sole superpower. They see this as crucial for the future of the
United States and would not put their own partisan political goals ahead
of it. Even if they disagree with Obama's execution of foreign policy,
and would say so openly, they refrained from sabotaging him in the way
that they had on domestic policy. Until the Iran talks.
Republicans are earnestly alarmed about the Obama administration's
effort to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. They believe that Iran is
negotiating in bad faith and will exploit any deal to further its
nuclear program. Many analysts find this argument unpersuasive,
but it is a valid position, and fair play to oppose the Iran deal on
those grounds. But that opposition has grown into something much bigger
than that, and with consequences beyond Iran policy.
Republicans, joined by some Democrats, tried for months to pass new
economic sanctions on Iran. The aim was clear: to kill the negotiations,
humiliating Obama on the world stage in the process. The US is offering
sanctions relief to Iran as part of any deal. By passing new sanctions
while the talks are still ongoing, Congress would send the message that
the president is not actually in charge of foreign policy and that the
US cannot be trusted to uphold its word. Iran would have little choice
but to walk away.
Republicans have not been able to pass new sanctions; Democrats, and
even a number of Republicans, have seemed unwilling to so openly
embarrass their own president on the world stage.
The moment that the line was crossed came on January 8, when McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner took matters into their own hands.
They secretly arranged for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
who also opposes Iran talks and has a famously poor relationship with
Obama, to speak to a joint session of Congress urging them to kill the
negotiations.
"We are sailing into uncharted waters"