My newest piece at LobeLog looks at Republican efforts to kill the Corker-Menendez bill, the brainchild of their chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
What these proposed amendments all have in common is that, if they’re added to the Corker bill, the White House’s promise not to veto it becomes null and void. In addition, at least some of the bill’s Democratic support (necessary to override a veto) will peel away, putting the bill’s chances of passing in peril. So say both Corker and Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Ben Cardin (D-MD), who have been heavily lobbying their fellow senators to leave the bill alone. They know its chances of being enacted decrease the more amendments are heaped upon it.
Presumably the Republicans who are about to try to load the Corker bill up with those amendments realize what they’re doing. It’s a mistake to assume anything with the “Bomb Bomb Iran” types, whose stunts so far have done more to hurt their cause than to further it. But at least a few of them must realize the likely outcome. So why are they killing the one chance they have at even slightly increasing congressional oversight of a comprehensive deal?
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 