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Sen. Jim Delay and New START

As the Senate prepares to take up President Obama’s new arms control treaty with Russia on Wednesday for the first time, a Republican opponent of the pact plans to force the entire text to be read in hopes of keeping it from being approved in the lame-duck session. The reading of bills and other measures […]

As the Senate prepares to take up President Obama’s new arms control treaty with Russia on Wednesday for the first time, a Republican opponent of the pact plans to force the entire text to be read in hopes of keeping it from being approved in the lame-duck session.

The reading of bills and other measures is usually dispensed on the Senate floor but because that requires unanimous consent, a single senator can block it. Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, declared that he would object, meaning that clerks will have to read the full text of the so-called New Start treaty and protocol, which could take 12 to 15 hours. ~Peter Baker

One thing that you can say about Jim DeMint is that he follows through on his threats. Earlier in the month, he had suggested that he might use delaying tactics to slow down and block the treaty during the lame-duck session, and he is going to do just that. DeMint has at least twenty-one colleagues on the Republican side that will probably join with him in these blocking maneuvers, and the more that the hard-line treaty opponents stall the easier it will be for the equivocating members of the leadership to repeat their claim that “there is not enough time.” After Kyl caused the treaty’s consideration to be delayed until after the election, it will make it that much easier for anti-treaty irreconcilables to drag out the process over the next nine days and make sure that there really won’t be enough time. The less time for actual debate on the treaty, the easier it is for Kyl to complain that the majority was trying to “jam” the treaty through. Kyl has already said that he will organize votes against the treaty if it is brought to a vote before Christmas:

He did not rule out a vote this year, but set conditions that might be hard for the administration to meet, including a long floor debate. “If they try to jam us, if they try to bring this up the week before Christmas, it’ll be defeated,” he said. “If they allow plenty of time for it, and I think it will take two weeks, then it’s a different matter.”

DeMint’s delaying maneuvers help make the long floor debate impossible, and that makes Kyl’s threat more meaningful. Kyl also reiterated this threat yesterday in very plain terms: “And if he [Reid] does bring it up, I will work very hard to achieve that result, namely that the treaty fails.” To the extent that the omnibus bill meets with similar resistance, which DeMint has also promised to lead, that helps eat up more time, and it gives Kyl another excuse for his opposition to voting on the treaty this session.

Jennifer Rubin is already busily trying to spin all of this as the fault of the Democratic leadership:

Will Russian “reset” cheerleaders, gay activists, and Hispanic groups feel aggrieved? If so, they should take it up with the Democratic House and Senate leaders who had two years to get their business done.

As far as New START is concerned, that is simply false. The treaty wasn’t even signed until April, and consideration of the treaty has been delayed until now to satisfy the “concerns” of Senate Republicans. Almost all of the time since the treaty-signing has been wasted by the minority’s delaying tactics in the form of Kyl’s demands for ever more money. Having wasted all of that time and held up consideration of the treaty for the sake of these bogus “concerns,” the minority has continued to throw up as many obstacles as possible. Assuming that New START is not ratified, most of the Senate Republicans are the ones responsible.

Update: Josh Rogin reports that several Republican Senators (including Kyl and DeMint) have won a procedural battle that will make it easier to wreck the ratification process:

To prepare for the coming debate, several GOP senators asked the Senate parliamentarian to give an official ruling on whether the preamble to the treaty is open for amendments.

Treaty supporters object to amending the preamble, because any changes would force the treaty to go back to bilateral negotiations with the Russians, which could take months and possibly even scuttle New START entirely [bold mine-DL].

This is why treaty supporters refer to such amendments as “treaty killers.” The negative effect that amendments would have on the process is likely far greater than the effect the amendments would have on the agreement itself.

On Tuesday, the parliamentarian ruled in the GOP’s favor, stating that yes, the preamble to the treaty is amendable. We’re told that several GOP senators are preparing to try to amend it to take out the language that acknowledges the link between offensive and defensive missile capabilities.

What is extraordinary about this is that the language in the premable is non-binding. The language these Senators want taken out has no effect on missile defense. Acknowledging the relationship between defensive weapons and strategic arms is a statement of the obvious. As Fred Kaplan has described it before, it is “Arms Control 101.” It entails no substantive commitments or limits on the part of the U.S. For the sake of deleting this unremarkable, non-binding language, GOP Senators are prepared to kill the entire treaty. Of course, that is the real purpose of the exercise.

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