A peevish Mitch McConnell forced the Senate to vote Tuesday evening, again,
to begin debate on the Iran disapproval resolution. He lost, again. But true to form, he promised there would be even more Iran votes and
set one up for Thursday, this time a procedural vote—which again requires 60 votes—to prevent President Obama from lifting sanctions on Iran under the deal until Iran publicly supports Israel.
As Democratic leader Harry Reid said, "The Republican leader has threatened to us, 'we lost and we're going to make you suffer.' […] The Republicans have lost. They lost this measure, and we should move on to something else." But they won't move on to something else, not until McConnell feels he has adequately "shamed" Democrats, as Politico puts it. The problem is, Democrats haven't been shamed, on any of the votes McConnell has tried this on.
For the second time in less than a week Tuesday, the Senate blocked an attempt by the majority leader to push a measure to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal through the chamber. The try-and-try-again strategy—amounting to a repeated public shaming—has become something of a go-to move for McConnell.
Problem is, it's not working, at least if the metric of success is producing a different outcome. Democrats successfully filibustered the Iran measure again on Tuesday on a 56-42 vote—with no one from Minority Leader Harry Reid’s ranks switching sides from the same vote last week amid gripes from Democrats that McConnell was wasting precious floor time. […]
But several of McConnell’s previous attempts at revotes have gone south. The most dramatic case was DHS funding, when Senate Republicans forced Democrats to vote four times on a funding bill for the agency that also would have cut off cash to implement President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration. Each time, Democrats filibustered, bringing the agency responsible for repelling terrorist attacks to the brink of a shutdown, and leaving Republicans no shortage of egg on their collective face.
This time, though, they seem to think it will be different. Because . . . national security? McConnell depute John Cornyn (R-TX) says that "this is the most serious national security vote we will have had at least since 2002, on the authorization of the use of military force," and that Democrats "underestimate the consequences of this both from the national security perspective and from a political perspective." Okay. Killing this deal to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons is the equivalent to going to war? And that's supposed to convince people to come over to his side? When we know what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan? Of course, this isn't the first time McConnell and team have tried the national security card. It didn't work when he was trying to keep the Patriot Act alive, and it's not going to happen this time, either.
Furthermore, McConnell is planning on punishing Democrats who want to do what McConnell also purportedly wants to do—strengthen Israel—by refusing to hold any votes on their amendments to do that unless they can prove they have 67 votes. Because he can. Meanwhile, the government runs out of money at midnight on September 30, and McConnell hasn't done anything about that.