House Speaker John Boehner
It was only a matter of time before infighting broke out among House Republicans over how to say they really, no really, hate President Obama's Iran nuclear deal. Now, with Senate Republicans
probably lacking the votes to get through a resolution of disapproval, House Republicans are looking for ways not just to say they hate the deal, but to claim they've legally blocked it even though they haven't. House Speaker John Boehner's
current plan:
“1. A vote on a measure asserting that the president has failed to give Congress the required background on his Iran Deal,” the e-mail says. “2. A vote on a bill to prevent the president from lifting the Iran sanctions. 3. A vote of approval on the Iran Deal, which will force Democrats to cast a vote in support of what the president is doing.”
Step one is about claiming that because the International Atomic Energy Agency has negotiated some detailed procedures with Iran, including things that
cannot be made public without putting informants at risk, Obama has not fulfilled the requirement of the Nuclear Agreement Review Act that he disclose everything negotiated with Iran. Step three is based on the idea that Democrats who would happily vote against blocking the deal will have more trouble voting for it, but, as Politico's Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer
point out:
The problem with that element is that House Republicans will now be at odds with Senate Republicans, who plan to vote instead on a disapproval resolution.
It's a seemingly minor distinction, but their failure to get on the same page means Republicans may end up diluting their message of opposition to the accord.
The far-far-right extremists of the House, along with Sen. Ted Cruz, are all about diluting messages, though, and then saying it was leadership's fault for sticking to the original plan and not bowing to their whim of the week.
Congressional Republicans have an ally in AIPAC, though. Having flushed more than $20 million down the drain trying to keep Democrats from supporting the deal, AIPAC is now lobbying them to vote for cloture on a disapproval resolution even while supporting the deal. According to a spokesman, "Preventing that vote would be contrary to the spirit of the Corker-Cardin legislation that was passed by a near unanimous margin by the Senate." That's an interesting interpretation of "the spirit" of the Corker-Cardin bill, since it explicitly allowed the resolution to be filibustered, which it did not have to do.
It's a pretty well established rule of politics that when you're losing, you flail. That's abundantly evident here. Meanwhile, the Senate has scheduled a cloture vote—the first but possibly not the last—for Thursday afternoon.