The new START treaty looks poised for ratification. As I explain at Greg's place, if it is ratified, it'll be a huge win for the White House, but only because Republicans insisted on turning a non-controversial treaty into a partisan fist-fight:
The problem is, the New START treaty is about as controversial as a tuna salad sandwich. Not only has the current military leadership and every living Republican Secretary of State endorsed it, but former Republican national security stalwarts such as Brent Scowcroft are "baffled" by the GOP's decision to obstruct ratification. New START is also popular -- a CNN poll from November shows three quarters of Americans support ratifying the treaty.
If New START is ratified, the only reason it'll be considered an Obama victory is because Republicans decided to oppose it without any real reason for doing so. If the Senate had simply ratified the treaty without any fuss, Obama might have gotten a few days of positive press, but it wouldn't have been treated as a major political success. Because Senate Republicans turned ratification into a huge partisan brawl, a Democratic president renewing an agreement with Russia designed by Republican presidents now looks like a massive victory for the administration.
Obstruction has worked fairly well for the GOP so far. This time though, it looks like it backfired. It's striking how much of the lame duck--DREAM, START--that would have been part of a standard GOP agenda in years past are controversial, simply because Obama wants them to happen.
