President Obama’s Last Best Hope to Round Up Syria Action Support in Senate/House

[KoKo]

The White House is pushing ahead with its “flood the zone” approach — its most intensive lobbying campaign since the push for health care reform.

The president and top administration officials have made contact with more than 85 senators and 165 members of the House. They’ve enlisted respected voices in both parties to argue the case on their behalf. They’ve courted members with briefings in the Situation Room and dinner at the vice president’s residence. They’re paying particularly close attention to constituencies sympathetic to the personal argument — Hispanics, African-Americans and progressives.

The path to success rests on the notion that the more that lawmakers hear the president’s case, the more inclined they will be to support the call for action.

“I have supported this president from Day One,” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Let me say what I’m worried about is becoming more isolated in the world if we don’t have the full backing of the international community. I don’t think that the public wants to see any more violence and destruction and death in Syria.”

Then there is Connecticut Rep. John Larson, a former top House Democrat who wants to get back into leadership at some point.

Larson is personally reluctant to support strikes; his constituents are opposed to intervention in Syria; and home state Sen. Chris Murphy voted against the resolution in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Like a handful of lawmakers in both parties who would like to rise in leadership, the Syria vote offers Larson an opportunity to draw a clear contrast with the current party bosses — Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer — all of whom are backing Obama.

But beyond the set of incentives compelling Larson to be a “no” vote, Obama doesn’t have the kind of relationship with the former chairman of the Democratic Caucus that would warrant Larson to want to bail out a president who made his own mess with Syria.
A common criticism from Congress held that Obama hasn’t seemed interested in the courtship rituals that build bonds for a president. White House aides have long argued that a few more rounds of golf or cocktail hours wouldn’t flip votes or soften opposition to his agenda.

To the extent that he has increased his interaction with lawmakers this year — and he has done that with a series of dinners — it largely has been with Republican members of the Senate. As one veteran House aide who now works on K Street put it, every time Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) talks publicly about his latest conversation with McDonough, Obama further alienates House Democrats who wonder why they’re getting calls only from mid-level aides — or why they’re getting no calls at all.

Match that up against the phone calls and personal interactions lawmakers are having with their own constituents, and it’s easy to see why many in Congress think that Obama miscalculated by coming to them for approval.

One Democratic lawmaker who fielded calls from constituents this week said he got a call from his mother. It was the first time she had called him on a policy issue even though he’s been in Congress for more than a decade.

“As a constituent,” his mother said, “vote no.”

On the Republican side, Whip Kevin McCarthy has the same opportunity to contrast himself with Boehner and Cantor, both of whom have embraced the controversial use-of-force resolution. He, too, appears to be personally reluctant to approve of Syria strikes and, as a result, finds himself in the vast majority of rank-and-file Republicans. As with Larson, Obama hasn’t forged the kind of personal relationship with McCarthy that would lend itself to a do-me-a-solid pitch.
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There’s another major concern for House Democrats who are inclined to believe that the use of chemical weapons should draw a response: a possibility the White House will back authorization for a much broader offensive in order to bring Senate Republican hawks on board. The theory behind that strategy is that GOP hawks Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham can build momentum for the strikes in the Senate and then work the House side of the Capitol for the president.

That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the House’s view of McCain and Graham, said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who has strong ties to the White House, and it jeopardizes the president’s credibility when he tries to convince liberals and isolationists that strikes would be limited in scope and duration.

“Sen. McCain is a great American, but he doesn’t have a large constituency in the House, either among Republicans or Democrats,” said Van Hollen, who, with Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), has written a tightly restrictive alternative measure that would limit a Syria mission. “The risk [White House officials] run is that by trying to placate Sen. McCain, who wants more broad U.S. intervention, they put at risk the argument that this military action is designed to be narrowly targeted and focused.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/president-obamas-last-best-hope-96447_Page2.html

[NYC_SKP]

1. What if the Syria agrees to give up their CW?

Might we not need to pursue support for air strikes, and might not the pursuit of approval in advance of a firm commitment on their part be a useful strategy?

[Puzzledtraveller]

2. The redline charge was that they used chemical weapons.

That is what the admin is charging and selling. The latest Russia/Syria play will be largely ignored.

[NYC_SKP]

4. I think he knows better than to go down on that one.

It's not as if there was a singular CW event, or that this has escalated.

This is sword-rattling, IMO, and I believe that there is a solution without military action.

I hope I'm not wrong.

[KoKo]

3. Senate is going to hold the vote on "Wednesday" (9/11) can you believe!

And the votes do need to go forward because there's no sure sign that the CW turn over to UN will be accepted and that it will go smoothly if it is. So...he needs to have Congress vote one way or the other. But, according to the Politico article....it's not looking so good.

Sounds like it's going to be an interesting next few weeks or longer before we know much of anything enough to breathe a sigh of relief.