Posted on 03/09/2015 11:58:50 AM PDT by Dave346
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid angrily denounced a Republican-led effort to circumvent President Barack Obama’s pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran, calling it “hard slap in the face” of the United States.
As Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the engineer of a letter that panned Obama’s effort as merely an “executive agreement,” watched from the presiding officer’s chair on Monday afternoon, Reid called the end-around by 47 Republicans a “juvenile” attack and an attempt to undermine Obama “purely out of spite.”
“The judgment of my Republican colleagues seems to be clouded by their abhorrence of President Obama. The Republican senators sent a letter to the Iranian leadership aimed at sabotaging these negotiations,” Reid said. “It’s unprecedented for one political party to directly intervene in an international negotiation with the sole goal of embarrassing the president.”
On Monday morning, Cotton and dozens of his GOP colleagues sent a letter to the Iranian leadership, urging Tehran to regard any deal without congressional approval as an executive agreement that could be undone by a future president with the “stroke of a pen.” But while Republicans viewed the letter as a reminder to Iran of Congress’ responsibilities, Democrats said the move could eventually lead to another conflict in the Middle East if it causes nuclear talks to fall apart.
“I would describe this letter as a continuation of a partisan strategy to undermine the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy and advance our national security interests around the globe,’’ White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
After Reid’s speech, he and his top deputy Dick Durbin of Illinois held a colloquy in front of Cotton. Durbin asked Reid if Cotton and his colleagues realized that one alternative to the ongoing nuclear talks “could be another war in the Middle East.”
“Everyone should acknowledge that if we can work something out with Iran so they don’t get nuclear weapons, we’ve got to try to do that,” Reid responded. Obama “has said there’s less than a 50 percent chance he can get it done. But shouldn’t we let him try?”
The partisan fireworks over the GOP letter came just as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) delayed a vote on a bill that would allow Congress to reject an agreement with Iran from the Senate calendar.
See post 20.
Harry got a slap in the face from obama’s thighs.....
Obastard doesn’t care, he is just trying to kick the can down the road to be someone else’s problem.
These dumazz donkeys should realize that IF their boy owebama gives the iraniands what they want there WILL be another war in the ME and this time it will be a NUCLEAR WAR!
PARTY UBER ALLES!
He’s not the first dick with one eye.
Someone needs to poke that ba$tard’$ other eye out.
Yeah, and it was unprecedented for one political party to ditch the appointments filibuster to pack the Courts with docrinaire Progressives.
Just like it was unprecedented for one political party to ram through a major piece of social legislation (Obamacare) on a party-line vote using procedural trickery.
And like it was unprecedented for one party to sit by while it’s President chucked the Constitutional powers of the Congress aside to legalize 5 million immigrants using a blanket “Executive Action”.
It’s long past time the GOP started answering unprecedented actions with other unprecedented actions.
As much as I dislike Reid, Obama, et al, the Republican Senators stepped out of line on this.
I fully support their effort to pass legislation to impose sanctions if Iran is not reasonable and insists on moving forward with a bomb, but writing a letter to a foreign government is way beyond what the Senators should be doing.
Certainly Obama has trespassed mightily on legislative turf, but the Senators are being childish. In addition, this is likely playing into Iran’s and Obama’s hands. When this thing blows up and goes to hell, both sides are going to point to the U.S. Senate and a sizable number of voters will agree with them.
Again, I cannot overstate my distain for Obama and for Reid, but these Senators have chosen to feel good rather than do the right thing.
I like it. It’s some of what we sent Senator Cotton to Washington to do, but it’s going to take a lot more of this sort of thing to rein in Obama.
About time somebody stood up, I’d say.
I like Cotton a lot too, but this is going to back fire.
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