Time for GOP to Get Tough Like Democrats and Nuke Iran Pact

 

IBDEditorials.com

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and fellow Republican Senate leaders speak about the Iran nuclear deal Wednesday on Capitol Hill. AP

Iran Deal: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can employ the "nuclear option" to stop Democrats from filibustering to prevent a vote on the Iran pact. Democrats have done it; Republicans should be just as tough.

It is beyond disgraceful that Senate Democrats would prevent a vote on one of the most consequential nuclear weapons agreements in history — and do so after having formally agreed to a tally of every senator and congressman.

But this is a party of street fighters, doing anything it takes to get power and expand government. Their GOP opponents all too often do battle according to Miss Manners' rules for hosting an afternoon tea.

Republicans with nerve on the other side of the Capitol are calling on "The World's Greatest Deliberative Body" to show some guts.

Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Miss., this week wrote to McConnell urging him to follow the example of ex-majority leader Harry Reid when Democrats controlled the Senate. Using Reid's "nuclear option" would change Senate rules to prevent Democrats, who now have the needed 42 votes, from filibustering to block the Iran resolution from being brought to the floor.

"If Minority Leader Reid was willing to use this tactic to push through something as simple as judicial nominees despite the objections of Republicans," Palazzo told McConnell, "it is time that Republican leadership utilizes the procedure as a matter of national and global security. I implore you to use every tool at your disposal to stop what could be the most dangerous foreign policy decision in decades."

Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., is calling for the same. "I implore Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate leadership to use the so-called 'nuclear option' to require a simple majority to stop the Iran agreement," he said. "To require a super majority on a matter of great importance is improper, is offensive to the majority rule, and is damaging to our great republic."

Noting that the filibuster practice that the "nuclear option" relaxes dates back only to the 1970s, Griffith argued that the upper body should return to its previous "workable historical filibuster rule."

Don't hold your breath for McConnell to do so.

But if he did, it would beat what House Speaker John Boehner is up to. Now that Obama has the votes he needs, the speaker is threatening to sue based on Congress not being given the text of the side deals between Tehran and the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency.

While legally correct, why did Boehner wait until now to object this strenuously to the side deals?

As Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., complained, the speaker's lawsuit will take ages, and in the meantime "Congress would look feckless, weak, ineffective, and President Obama would take his flag and plant it in the ground and declare victory, and say, you know, 'See you in court. In 15 years, we'll have a decision.'"

Americans by a significant margin oppose Obama's nuclear capitulation to Iran. The GOP is in the majority in both houses. Yet the Stupid Party still gets snookered.