Facing Revolt From Actual Conservatives He Never Bothered to Talk To, Boehner Delays Key Vote on Iran Deal

Quick, let's get this Iran deal passed so we can get out to our districts and tell voters how strongly we opposed it.

House Republican leaders on Wednesday postponed work on a resolution to disapprove the Iran nuclear deal, after conservative members of Congress said they can't support a process that will result in approving the agreement.

Republicans met Wednesday morning, which let some members argue that they should be passing legislation that says President Obama failed to live up to a law passed earlier this year saying he must reveal all aspects of the deal. The GOP has said Obama failed to do this, as a deal on inspections between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency has not been given to U.S. officials.

Obviously, that refers to the objection noted in the last post.

Leadership will get together at 4pm to discuss "what to do next." What they will try to do is go forward even over conservative objections, because they have the following stupid, dishonest strategem in mind:

Sure, we're deliberately losing on this issue, but we're "making the Democrats vote for it on 9/11," so the Democrats will take political damage on this. (Even though we Republicans passed this along, too.)

I can't believe they're still doing this, thinking that we will be content with tactical political positioning "victories" that benefit no one at all except officeholders themselves, at the cost of actual American national security interests.

Furthermore, apart from being cynical, this is also stupid: There will be -- listen closely here -- absolutely no political benefits to holding the vote on 9/11.

These people live in two different worlds simultaneously: One world in which the public is so dumb and disengaged that they think we can't see the Failure Theater happening for us every single day, and another world where people are so keenly engaged with politics that they are swayed by the mere symbolism of holding the Iran deal vote on 9/11.

By the way, Obama can wait to veto this for a few days, thus keeping it from being a big issue on 9/11.

Cynical and stupid at the same time is not a winning combination, GOP.

Failure Theater, Redux: See the end of this post for the new failure theater -- they'll note that the clock has not yet begun running, but then vote on the Iran Deal anyway, thereby passing it.

Then they'll go out to the country and talk up how strenuously they fought President Obama and the Mullahs.

posted by Ace at 02:06 PM

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