Pigs in a Trough: Republican garbage jockeying for position in Sheldon Adelson Primary
April 8, 2015 at 8:59 am
Commentary – The following two articles
are examples of how Zio the Republican presidential hopefuls have
become. Lindsay Graham stated on CBS’s Face the Nation that every
Republican candidate except Rand Paul would have negotiated a “better
deal” with Iran (read “started a war with Iran”) than President Obama.
He even conceded that his erstwhile nemesis Hillary Clinton would have
negotiated a better deal. Meanwhile, Rick Perry has made it clear that
his campaign will center on the deal, stately unequivocally that one of
the first things he will do if elected will be to scrap it. The Republican hopefuls are jockeying for position ahead of the first in the nation primary — the Sheldon Adelson primary.
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday that nearly
anyone, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, could
negotiate a better nuclear deal with Iran than the current framework the Obama administration was able to secure.
Anyone, that is, except his fellow Republican, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.
“Is there a better deal to be had? I think so. What I would suggest
is if you can’t get there with this deal is to keep the interim deal in
place, allow a new president in 2017, Democrat or Republican, to take a
crack at the Iranian nuclear program,” Graham said in an interview on
CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “The best deal I think comes with a new
president. Hillary Clinton would do better. I think everybody on our
side except maybe Rand Paul could do better.”
He argued the current framework is “the best deal Barack Obama could
get with the Iranians because they don’t fear nor do they respect him
and our allies in the region don’t trust the president.”
Graham is among the many Republicans who has said he is exploring a run for president in 2016. Rand Paul is also a likely entrant in the 2016 GOP presidential primary.
The president sought to head off critics in Congress like Graham when
he hailed the framework of the deal in a Rose Garden address last week.
“When you hear the inevitable critics of the deal sound off, ask them
a simple question: do you really think this verifiable deal, if fully
implemented, backed by the world’s major powers, is a worse option than
another war in the Middle East?” he said.
Graham said he “doesn’t buy that for one minute.”
“It’s the best deal he could get but the question is, is Barack Obama
the best person to deal with the Iranians given his miserable foreign
policy failure? Does anybody really believe the Iranians will take the
billions of dollars that we’re about to give them and build hospitals
and schools?” he said. “I believe there’s a better deal. I don’t want a
war, but at the end of the day I don’t want to give Iran the tools and
the capability to continue to destroy the Mideast and one day destroy us
by building bigger missiles and until they say they will not destroy
the state of Israel, until they stop their provocative behavior, I think
we’d be nuts to give them more money and more capability.”
He was also critical of the Bush administration, saying it was a
“miserable failure” at reigning in Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Graham
argued that the real success story is congressional sanctions, which
brought Iran to the negotiating table.
PlayVIDEO
Rick Santorum: Nuclear deal empowers Iran
Like many other lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans,
Graham said Congress should have to approve the deal. He says he is
willing to give the administration until June to write the final
agreement, but after that, “I insist that Congress review the deal,
debate and vote on it before the deal becomes final.”
In his view, Congress should continue with sanctions that have been
in place during the interim deal, but wait to lift any more until there
is “the best opportunity to get the best result.”
“Require Iran to change its behavior stop destroying the Mideast,
stop bringing down governments one after another, stop chanting death to
America, death to Israel, then when they change their behavior, allow
the new president without the baggage of Barack Obama see if they can
negotiate a good deal,” Graham said.
Texas Governor Rick Perry hasn’t yet said whether he’s running for
president, yet he will announce Monday that if he wins the White
House he intends to trash President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran as one of his first official acts.
Perry will give what his staff is calling a major speech on national
security at the Citadel in South Carolina Monday. In advance of the
speech, Perry talked with reporters about his views on Obama’s and
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy and what he
would do to change it. He said atop his agenda is getting rid of the
deal that the Obama administration is negotiating with the Iranian
regime, a framework for which was announced last week.
“Should I run for president, and be so fortunate to be elected, one
of my first actions in office would be to invalidate the president’s
Iran agreement, which jeopardizes the safety and security of the free
world,” Perry will say in his speech, according to an advance copy of
his remarks.
Perry insists that contrary to Obama’s claims, the deal enables
rather than prevents a nuclear Iran, and will further destabilize the
Middle East by creating a regional competition for nuclear weapons: “He
says it prevents a nuclear Iran. Just the opposite, this agreement
enables it. And no agreement is better than a bad agreement.”
I asked Perry what he would do as president after scuttling the deal.
With no agreement, no negotiations and no inspections on Iran’s many
nuclear facilities, how would a President Perry propose to stop Iran
from getting the bomb?
He said he would seek to further cripple Iran’s economy, undermine
the Iranian regime by increasing support for its internal opposition,
and then rely on military strikes to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities
if necessary. “The message needs to be: As soon as that election result
comes in November of 2016, any agreement between the president of the
United States and the Ayatollah is a worthless piece of paper,” he said.
The U.S. should then work with Israel and America’s Arab allies to
increase pressure on Iran’s economy, he said, with airstrikes on Iran’s
nuclear facilities as a last resort. “The Israelis have dealt with this
twice, to take out their ability to use their nuclear facilities, and
that certainly is an option that needs to be on the table,” he said.
Perry’s comments put him squarely in line with the letter to Iran’s leaders
penned by freshman Senator Tom Cotton last month and signed by 47
Republican Senators, which warned that any deal Iran signs with the
Obama administration won’t last past Obama’s presidency.
By pledging to end the deal, Perry is going further than some of his
potential 2016 GOP rivals such as Jeb Bush, who have criticized the deal
but not said exactly what they would do about it if elected. “Nothing
in the deal described by the administration this afternoon would justify
lifting U.S. and international sanctions, which were the product of
many years of bipartisan effort,” Bush said last week. “I cannot stand
behind such a flawed agreement.”
There can be no real progress with Iran so long as that country
continues exporting terrorism and oppressing its own people, Perry told
reporters on Monday’s conference call. He said the U.S. should sell
crude oil on the international market to further cripple the Iranian
economy. He said there should be a more expansive covert program to
support Iranian dissidents and opposition to the ayatollahs and the
Iranian regime.
In his call with reporters, Perry harshly criticized Hillary
Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state and said that she shares
responsibility for Obama’s foreign-policy failures. “She’s either going
to have to stand up and say ‘I was a complete and utter failure as
Secretary of State,’ or she’s going to have to take ownership of these
issues,” Perry said. “I think you are going to find a secretary of state
who is going to be looked upon as a failure.”
Perry said Clinton did not stand up for Israel while she was a top
cabinet official: “Our oldest friend and most vibrant democracy in the
Middle East, Israel, is being put in jeopardy and she was part of that.”
