The letter from 47 Republican Senators on Iran is receiving a scathing response coast to coast. We begin with
Dana Milbank's take on the matter:
It’s true that 47 Republican senators did their level best to bring us closer to war by writing a letter to Iran’s mullahs, attempting to scuttle nuclear talks with the United States. But Republicans aren’t exactly subverting the United States. It’s more as if they’re operating their own independent republic on Capitol Hill. Call it the State of Republicania. [...] The defense industry contributed more than $25 million in the 2014 election cycle and spent more than $250 million lobbying over that time period, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. For the defense industry, this is a good investment: If Senate Republicans blow up nuclear talks, it makes war with Iran that much more likely — and nobody would benefit as much from that war as military contractors. [...]
Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), one of just seven Republican senators not to sign Cotton’s letter to the ayatollahs, said she thought it “more appropriate for members of the Senate to give advice to the president” and U.S. negotiators.
Spoken like a true American — which, in the corridors of Republicania these days, is nigh unto treason.
Jay Bookman at The Atlanta Journal Constitution:
[I]n their stubborn righteousness, in their self-satisfied belief that they and only they are the wise and proper spokesmen for this country, they have made the United States look weak in the eyes of the world. They have taken the true source of whatever influence we might carry — our unity — and they have debased it. They have done real harm to this country.
There’s no excuse for it. [...]
You don’t invite foreign leaders into your councils of government to undercut your own duly chosen leaders, no matter how much you may dislike those leaders. Nor do you reach out to a foreign enemy, opening your own negotiation channels, to try to sabotage the policies of those who were elected by your people and designated in the Constitution to handle those responsibilities.
When we speak to the world, we speak in one voice, as the United States of America, not as subsets of Americans who can be played off each other for the advantage of outsiders. We do not allow outsiders to divide us. We don’t invite outsiders to become players in our own affairs.
The Daily Beast's
Michael Tomasky:
I have probably written many times in the past that Republicans hit a new low, but as of this week you can toss all those. This Senate letter is the definite low of all time. I didn’t think these people could shock me, but this one genuinely was shocking in so many ways—not least the dishonor it brings on the United States Senate—that every other nutso thing they’ve done drops down one notch on the charts.
Treason, as the Daily News blared? I don’t know for sure about that. But I know to a certainty that if a group of Democratic senators had done this to a Republican president, Republicans and conservative pundits would be screaming the T-word and demanding the Justice Department investigate the senators.
Much more below the fold!
Tim Mak at The Daily Beast brings us the GOP's regret:
[E]ven among Republicans whose offices have signed the letter, there is some trepidation that the Iran letter injects partisanship into the Iran negotiations, shifting the narrative from the content of the deal to whether Republicans are unfairly trying to undercut the president.
“Before the letter, the national conversation was about Netanyahu’s speech and how Obama’s negotiations with Iran are leading to a terrible deal that could ultimately harm U.S. national security. Now, the Obama administration and its Capitol Hill partisans are cynically trying to push the conversation away from policy, and towards a deeply political pie fight over presidential and congressional prerogatives,” said a Senate Republican aide whose boss signed the letter.
However, while some on the Republican side are now rethinking the wisdom of sending a letter, none of the 47 Republican signatories are recanting their support for it or signaling an intent to do so.
David Ignatius suggests the party's foreign policy has moved from "merely partisan" to "downright dangerous":
Even by congressional Republican standards, the naysaying letter to Iran sent Monday by 47 GOP senators was grossly irresponsible. Not only did it undercut President Obama’s ability to negotiate a diplomatic agreement, but it also undermined the aspect of the Iran nuclear deal that would potentially be most beneficial to the United States and Israel.
[...] This latest GOP tactic of conveying skepticism about the accord directly to Tehran follows House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation last week to Netanyahu to, in effect, lobby against the deal from the floor of the U.S. Congress. These actions may be seen by allies abroad not just as a gesture of contempt for Obama, but also for the broader P5+1 negotiating group that includes Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China.
Even Republicans are crying foul. From
Kathleen Parker at The Washington Post:
The letter was a bad but not apocalyptic idea and illustrates one of the more dangerous aspects of Washington’s indigenous narcissistic disorder. The world does not revolve around one’s own exclusive perspective or wisdom — she wrote, ironically. [...] what was the rush to tell Iran, essentially, “You’re wasting your time” ? The 47 senators are like food critics who condemn a chef before he has finished preparing the entree. Their letter also signals to the world that they have zero respect for our president, or for the other world powers attempting to try diplomacy first.
This cannot have been helpful to any but the signees’ legendary standing in their own minds.
The Detroit Free Press comes out swinging:
[I]t certainly betrays a deep misunderstanding of our governmental structure, and a profound and dismaying disrespect for the office of the presidency, as well as its incumbent occupant. To disagree with a sitting president is one thing, even if that disagreement is loud, even if it is raucous. A deliberate attempt to undermine a sitting president's efforts to discharge his constitutional obligations is something else entirely. [...]
[T]he Republicans who dispatched this letter have done more than embarrass a president they dislike. They have also disgraced themselves and undermined the credibility of the nation whose constitution they took an oath to uphold.
The Arizona Republic:
[T]hey are effectively declaring a congressional right to conduct subversive, foreign-policy proxy wars with the president, with threats to blow up agreement negotiations as their weapon of choice.
Show us where that is to be found in the U.S. Constitution. McCain of all people should know better.
If President Obama has demonstrated a disdain for his constitutional authority, the 47 GOP senators have just joined him in a bipartisan display of contempt for our governing document. Their actions may fall short of the "traitorous" declamations of Democrats, but "irresponsible" would certainly apply.
Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman at Reuters:
What happens when senators and congressmen go around a controversial president to communicate directly with the enemy? They undermine the stability of their own party — and the integrity of the nation.
That’s what happened to the Federalists, the glorious political party of George Washington, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. Could the same thing happen to today’s Republican Party?
And yes, as
David Goldstein at McClatchy reports, the letter is unprecedented:
The U.S. Senate Historian’s Office has so far been unable to find another example in the chamber’s history where one political party openly tried to deal with a foreign power against a presidential policy, as Republicans have attempted in their open letter to Iran this week.