When it’s Obama’s, and signifies a sellout of Israel, the world, and 35 years of unified and unquestioned US policy.

That’s when.

This development is one of the many problems with Corker-Menendez. If there never was a chance of getting a veto-proof majority to block Obama, then passing that bill only affords him and the MSM an opportunity to crow about victory when he fails to get a single Republican vote, loses many influential members of his own party, and yet manages to stymie his opposition anyway by twisting arms (and who knows what else) in order to squeak by with enough of a minority to thwart the opposition’s efforts. All that Obama’s forces needed to block even a vote on the subject were 41 votes, and they now seem to have them.

Of course, Republicans could probably figure out some way to jettison the filibuster rule and vote on the Iran deal even without those 41 votes. The disapproval vote would then pass with a simple majority, but not enough to even come close to overriding a veto. So why bother? And I ask that question even though I am well aware that the GOP leadership lacks the intestinal fortitude to even consider it. But although I’m not sure it would be worth it even if we had a party and leadership willing to do it, I still think that something must be done.

Harry Reid offers his usual sterling thoughts:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said Tuesday he will insist that 60 Senate votes are required to pass a resolution of disapproval.

“There is no precedent in recent history for an issue of this magnitude getting consideration in the Senate without having to secure 60 votes,” Reid said during a speech before the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

That would be humorous if the issue weren’t so very very serious. Let me correct you, Sen. Reid. You are right that “There is no precedent in recent history for an issue of this magnitude getting consideration in the Senate without having to secure 60 votes.” Actually, there is also no precedent in recent history (or perhaps American history) for a minority party to force “an issue of this magnitude” (Obama’s deal with Iran) onto a strongly opposed American public as well as the majority party in Congress. And that’s not just because the present-day Republicans in Congress are feckless. In fact—although we on the right are reluctant to face it—the Republican majority would be powerless to stop Obama without the cooperation of very significant numbers on the minority side in order to reach the requisite 60 and then 67 votes, and that cooperation has not been forthcoming even on an issue where the danger to America and the world is crystal clear, and the break with previous bilateral policy profound.

Listen to what Democratic support for Obama’s position sounds like, and weep. Here’s Michigan Democratic Senator Gary Peters voicing his “support”:

Peters said in a statement, “Despite my serious reservations, I will reluctantly vote against a motion of disapproval because I believe that doing so will protect the credibility of the United States to hold Iran accountable to adhere to every single obligation”…

‘Tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door, but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.

And lest you think it would have been just hunky dory had Congress not passed Corker-Menendez, think again. These same 41 Democratic senators (and perhaps even more) would have blocked a vote on the Iran deal as a treaty, too.

Why has this sort of thing never happened before? One reason is that, in the past, very basic issues of national defense did not engender a similar magnitude of disagreement; the sides tended to be on the same page on them for the most part. In addition, if a president wanted to do an about-face on a huge matter of foreign policy, he would not have done so in the past without major support. Nor would he have done so against public opinion (see NOTE below for a discussion of Nixon and China), because he feared the consequences.

Obama is sui generis in being audacious enough to even think of doing such a thing, and confident enough that he could get away with it. And I believe he is correct; he will get away with it.

Andrew McCarthy and Paul Mirengoff have some suggestions for how next to proceed in order to even have a chance of stopping this. Again, it seems that the GOP Congressional leadership is loathe to take them to heart. At this point, who can profess surprise at this? But the GOP leadership’s reaction (or rather, lack of reaction) is still unconscionable.

Here’s Powerline’s Scott Johnson on the subject:

I wrote a spokesman for Senator McConnell yesterday on this point. I posed the question whether Senator McConnell was aware that the administration had not complied with the requirement for submission of side deals set forth in Corker-Cardin. If so, I asked, what is he going to do about it? Senator McConnell’s spokesman responded: “He’s called the administration out on not handing over these deals. He’s going to oppose the deal and get a vote on the resolution of disapproval. I’m not sure there’s much that can be done beyond that, unfortunately.”

Not only is the letter’s tone of mild regret offensive and deplorable, but the reply doesn’t make much sense in view of the 41 Democratic votes to block any vote in the Senate. McConnell is “going to oppose the deal and get a vote on the resolution of disapproval”? How’s he going to do that? Is he going to do away with the need for cloture in order to vote? That would at least be interesting, although ultimately ineffective in terms of overriding a veto. But I very much doubt that’s what McConnell contemplates. No, his office probably just hasn’t updated its form letters yet to reflect the new “unfortunate” reality. And when the vote is blocked, he will just declare that to be “unfortunate,” too, and claim his hands are tied.

[NOTE: On Nixon and China, I will reproduce something I wrote last month.

Nixon’s trip to China is not a good analogy with Obama and Iran, although the left is very fond of making it. Among other things, Nixon’s well-known history of anti-Communism defused criticism to a large extent, but Obama has no such hardline history on Iran. Au contraire.

Nixon faced very little criticism from either party in a Democratic-dominated Senate (it was 54/44 D/R and the House was 255 to 180).

This rather obscure piece is the only article I’ve found online so far that deals in any detail with the amount of Congressional or popular opposition Nixon faced. Basically, any serious opposition was limited to William Loeb, who had been the editor of the very conservative Manchester Union Leader, and just a few others. Similarly, the MSM was almost universally approving and optimistic about his overtures, as was most of the public. Taiwan was understandably negative about the US rapprochement with China, but that seemed a minor problem on the US domestic scene.

But the huge differences between Nixon/China and Obama/Iran are hardly limited to the differences in US public opinion, although that’s important. There are large substantive and strategic differences as well. Also important was the fact that Nixon was not negotiating a nuclear arms deal, but rather beginning diplomatic relations and opening trade, a far less controversial process (although at this point we see that it has had major repercussions, some of them negative for the US). But China already was a nuclear power at the time of Nixon’s trip, and had been for several years.]