The landmark arms control treaty just needs 67 votes in the Senate. What could possibly go wrong?!1

[UTUSN]

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http://gawker.com/5512535/historic-arms-treaty-ready-to-be-ratified-by-totally-not+at+all-broken-senate

Historic Arms Treaty Ready to be Ratified by Totally Not-At-All Broken Senate

President Obama and Russian President Medvedev just signed a landmark new arms control treaty. Now, it's up to the United States Senate—the world's greatest deliberative body—to ratify it. All it takes is 67 votes. ....

So, at the moment, it has broad enough bipartisan support to make Senate ratification seem like just a formality.

But that is because it has not yet been sufficiently demagogued! You just wait, guys. And wait, and wait— relevant Senate committee hearings will maybe begin sometime this... spring, let's say. Those will last a while. By the time anyone's ready to vote on the damn thing, it'll be practically late summer. You think Senate Republicans want to hand the President a major foreign policy victory just before the midterm elections? ....

And it is pretty easy to predict how things will go once Fox and talk radio really get into it—it'll be all "Barack Obama wants to take away our nukes and our submarines," and suddenly the idea that anyone anywhere in the world should be working toward even limited nuclear disarmament will be dangerous peacenik America-hating nonsense.

So far, none of the usual suspects have anything to say about START. This just means the relevant Luntz/Kristol/Meese/"Council for National Policy" talking point memos haven't been drafted and disseminated yet. But soon! Soon we will learn that Barack Obama is a modern-day Alger Hiss, determined to let your child die in a fiery nuclear holocaust.



Send an email to Alex Pareene, the author of this post, at [e-mail].

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[Dr Morbius]

1. A fine point.

It has occurred to me also that it is unlikely that one can find eight Republican Senators who are willing to put country before party, and further, get them to agree to an arms reduction.

Obama will be painted pink by the right long before this passes, if it does. They'll try to use this to reinforce the old "liberals are weak" meme. It's going to be ugly.

But there's little beauty these days in our beautifully designed government.