Plan B Forum

Deliberately harming the country for partisan advantage is treason.


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Why We Would Be Better Off without the Republican Party

Ben Armbruster reports on Brent Scowcroft:

Scowcroft on START: ‘Partisan’ GOP Don’t Want To Give Obama ‘A Foreign Policy Victory’: Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) has been the leading Senate Republican urging the upper chamber of Congress to ratify the New START arms control treaty with Russia.... Lugar has been reluctant to criticize his colleagues’ obstruction. When asked last week if they were just playing politics, Lugar said, “I am not ascribing motivations to anybody.” But other Republicans don’t seem to be holding back. Brent Scowcroft served as national security adviser to two Republican presidents and has been pleading with Congress to ratify New START. Profiling Lugar’s awkward position vis-a-vis other Senate Republicans on this issue, [Abby Phillip and Carol E. Lee of] Politico report today that Scrowcroft isn’t being as diplomatic as Lugar on the GOP’s incentive for holding up START:

In an attempt to rally bipartisan support for the treaty, the White House has enlisted the kind of GOP foreign policy wise men that Lugar exemplifies – among them former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker. But they have had no success with members of their own party, and it has left them scratching their heads over the source of the GOP opposition. “It’s not clear to me what it is,” said Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush who noted that this START treaty is not very different from previous ones negotiated and ratified under Republican presidents. “I’ve got to think that it’s the increasingly partisan nature and the desire for the president not to have a foreign policy victory”...

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/11/w ... party.html


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From the ' comments ' section:

"DrDick said...

The Republican Party quit caring about actual governance about 20-30 years ago and now are only concerned with acquiring and using raw power. They frankly do not give a damn about the country or the American peole, as long as they get theirs.
Reply November 27, 2010 at 10:29 AM
... "

Truer words ...

yrs,
rubato

There are two elements to the START treaty: The irrelevant and the stupid.

There is no conceivable danger of an unprovoked Russian nuclear attack on anyone. The many years of MAD proves that. Monitoring the location, condition, etc., of ours and the Russians' nuclear weapons can do no harm, one supposes, but is anything but "urgent."

Second, the treaty freezes our development of defensive measures, which are the only important thing in the game right now, given that the only real threat in the coming years is the attack by a rogue regime in Iran, NKorea, etc.

One can only guess why Barry is making such a big deal of this now. It is the LEAST IMPORTANT thing on his plate. Perhaps he (and his toadies) see it as an issue where they can portray the R's as being mindlessly obstructive.

It has certainly worked on the rube person. But then again,his thinking is never very deep.

Dick Lugar is one of the few Republicans I would have considered voting for for President, had he made it through the nomination process--and his forte is foreign policy. That the current Republican leadership is willing to disregard his foreign policy advice speaks volumes.

Opinions can surely differ on whether this is a good treaty or not. But nobody I've read makes a credible case why it can't be considered by the recently elected Senate in January.

They have enough important stuff to keep them busy.

Econoline wrote:Dick Lugar is one of the few Republicans I would have considered voting for for President, had he made it through the nomination process--and his forte is foreign policy. That the current Republican leadership is willing to disregard his foreign policy advice speaks volumes.

There is no "Republican leadership".

yrs,
rubato