Last night, Hugh Hewitt asked Lindsey Graham if voting for Senator Bob Corker’s Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, which set up the procedure for approval or rejection of the Iran deal, was a mistake.
HH: Senator Graham, do you regret voting for Corker-Menendez-Cardin now this has worked out this way?LG: Oh no, not at all. It gives us the chance to have the debate. At the end of the day, I never expected the Democratic minority to turn over the entire Senate to us on the Iran deal. And let’s say, if you get a majority, then you can do anything you want. I never expected that, I would not have done that if that if I had been a Democrat. But I do expect, that we have the debate.
HH: But you could’ve had a debate at the same time about the executive agreement. Have you added stature do the Iran deal by virtue of Corker-Menendez-Cardin?
LG: Quite the opposite, I think we will have a congressional record of where a bipartisan majority voted against the deal which would be very important for the next president to reject this agreement. If we had no debate at all, it would have been a mistake. The price of having a debate was to get sixty votes, and I think we will get sixty votes. We’ll have that debate. The president will veto the legislation which will allow again the next president an opportunity to get a better deal because this deal will have been rejected by a bipartisan fashion.
“It gives us the chance to have the debate.” Why are Republicans acting like this is some sort of significant concession by Democrats, or a GOP victory? This is the most consequential change to U.S. foreign policy in decades, and we’re just supposed to be happy that the Senate debated it? Isn’t that the most basic, minimal requirement? Why are Senate Republicans now like Oliver Twist asking for some more gruel?
Why is a bipartisan majority voting against the deal “very important for the next president to reject this agreement” if majority support in the Senate isn’t important to enacting it?
“If we had no debate at all, it would have been a mistake.” No kidding!
If indeed “the price of having a debate was to get sixty votes,” and there are not six Democratic senators who say a foreign-policy change this sweeping requires a debate in Congress, then that price is too high. Nuke the filibuster for matters that involve the constitutional duties of the Senate — i.e., ratification of treaties.
