New Chalcedon wrote:Alien Space Bats wrote:The Republicans are seeing this as an opportunity to finish the President off.
Were a Republican President asking for this intervention under these exact circumstances ("red lines" and all), John Boehner would be whipping his Caucus harder that a dominatrix on crystal meth, and — with the exception of Rand Paul and a few random backbenchers — the entire GOP would be falling all over themselves to "support the President" (under threat of drawing the scorn of conservative talk radio blowhards like Rush Limbaugh [who repeats RT's line about how it was the rebels who used chemical weapons and not Assad; were a Republican in power, he'd be condemning anyone who said what he's saying on the air today as a traitor and a Russian tool]). In the meantime, Democrats who might want to oppose the President would be edging towards support of the authorization on the grounds that opposing it might make them look weak, leaving only those Democrats in possession of safe seats to oppose the vote.
Under that scenario, I'd expect the final numbers to be 75-25 in the Senate and 320-115 in the House.
But we don't have a Republican President; we have a Democratic one. Consequently, I'd expect something like a 58-42 vote in the Senate (without a filibuster) and then a 185-250 vote (against) in the House. After that, the Republicans will spend the next several months declaring the Obama Presidency "over" and screaming loudly about how the President's "fecklessness" has done "irreparable harm" to the country.
I'm going to need to buy several bottles of Tums just to keep my stomach settled; the aftermath of this vote is going to be completely nauseating.
Will even today's brain-dead media be able to ignore the fact that most of the "nay" votes came from Republicans in the House?
The unfortunate thing is, the two-party right only criticises the two-party 'left' when elections approach, then they almost practically behave the same afterwards. Then vice versa.
Look at the similarities between Sarkozy & Hollande in our nation.
Look at how Cameron is imitating Blair.
Look at Obomber imitating Bush.
Look at how well McCain collaborated with Obomber to coordinate with the FSA death squads (remember, he slipped into Syria illegally then met with well known criminal elements of the death squads)