RUSH: The Iran deal. The short version here before we get into it in great detail. It appears — and for this, I have to rely on people I trust who are extremely well informed on this, honest and objective. According to people I trust — friends of mine that I know that are deeply, deeply, deeply invested in this story — there is a way for the Congress, for the Senate to stop the Iran deal, even despite the Corker deal.
In fact, there is a portion of the Corker deal that makes it possible. It can happen, and it doesn’t involve the Treaty Clause. It can happen. It involves sanctions. It involves Obama failing to follow his own commitments back in the summer. It’s kind of in the weeds, but you know me: I excel at making the complex understandable.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Over the weekend Andy McCarthy says he “offered a concrete plan to undermine President Obama’s atrocious Iran deal.” It was a column designed to advise members of the Senate how they have at their grasp, in their ability, to stop this deal from happening, and that it’s easy. “It is an easy one, because all that the Republican-controlled Congress has to do, if it really wants to derail this [Iranian nuke deal], is follow the law that they wrote and Obama signed, the Corker law — the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, sometimes also known as ‘Corker-Cardin’…”
Now, I realize that many of you are probably scratching your heads, understandably so, because you’ve heard that the Corker deal basically made it impossible for Obama to lose because it reversed the treaty process. In the case of treaties, the Senate has to come up with 67 votes to affirm, ratify a treaty. What the Corker bill did was essentially say the Senate has to come up with 67 votes to stop it.
It may sound like it’s six of one, half dozen of another, but it actually made it much more difficult along the treaty lines to stop it. However, this new suggestion has nothing to do with the treaty clause since Obama refuses to be bound by that. Since Obama refuses to call it a treaty and be treated as such, then the 67-vote thing obviously is moot. And so the new idea is from McCarthy. Even though it does not meet the treaty clause standards, the Corker law does contain a useful ability.
The Corker law can legitimately repeal the anti-nuclear sanctions against Iran, because the sanctions are statutory. So you don’t need a treaty to repeal them. And if you nuke the sanctions, if you are able to repeal the sanctions with the Corker bill, then the Iranians pull out. They’re not gonna want any part of it. If the sanctions don’t get lifted, there’s no reason for them to sign the deal. Now, Andy’s column explaining this…
You know, Andy is a former prosecutor and covers every imaginable detail and objection with an answer. I don’t have the time here to delve into his entire piece, but you can see it at National Review Online, and I’m sure Koko will link to it at RushLimbaugh.com. Essentially what it boils down to now is, since the treaty aspect of this is vamanos, the only way to block Obama here now is for Congress to show that Obama has not complied with the condition he had to satisfy in order to lift the sanctions.
That condition was to disclose the entire deal to Congress by July 19th he did not do that. That requirement was in the Corker bill. The entirety of the deal had to be disclosed to Congress by July 19th, and it wasn’t. I mean, it wasn’t even close. And even after everybody was told we had a deal, there was still a couple of side deals out there that we learned about that then the Regime said, “Well, the side deals had nothing to do with that!
“I mean, those things are negotiated and we nothing to do with that.” So the point is that the statutes — or the sanctions, rather — are statutory, meaning they are a matter of law. You do not need to delve into any aspect of treaties either ratifying them or not, in order to deal with the sanctions. If the Republicans in the Senate could force the sanctions to be maintained — in other words, not lifted — then there’s no way the Iranians agree to this, because the Iranians want the sanctions lifted in addition to everything else.
And of course in the Obama deal they get the sanctions lifted. But Obama has not complied with a condition he had to satisfy. Now, you might say, “It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not a big deal, Rush. Okay, so he didn’t ’til everybody about July 19th.” Hey, folks, it doesn’t matter. That is not the point. The point is there’s a way to stop it. The Republicans have in the palm of their hand a way to stop this.
The question is as it has always been: Do they really want to? And this gets back to everything we’ve been discussing today, yesterday, the day before. It doesn’t appear they want to do a thing to stop Obama. Before they had the Senate, they said, “Well, all we have is the House. We can’t stop anything. We need the Senate.” So we gave them the Senate. “Well, we can’t stop Obama! We really need the White House.”
So whatever they’ve asked for, they have been given by virtue of votes. And it is obvious that they have no desire to stop Obama. The only point of this piece here that McCarthy wrote is to point out there is a way; they have it in the palm of their hand. It’s a matter of whether or not they will use it. Now, if they go ahead with this farce of voting for a resolution of disapproval, that’s the part of the Corker bill that is the joke.
If they go ahead with this voting for a resolution of disapproval, that’s what Obama can easily veto, and then eliminate the Corker bill. ‘Cause the Republicans cannot override it ’cause they don’t have 67 votes for anything. If they go that route, then Congress will be deemed to have forgiven Obama’s failure to disclose the full agreement by date certain July 19th. And if all of that happens, it means the sanctions will be deemed lifted.
Now, McCarthy admits that the point he’s making here is independent of the idea that it should have been a treaty argument. Some people are making the argument that it should be a treaty. We should treat this as a treaty and deal with it as a treaty, and Obama ought to have to ratify it as a treaty. The Senate ought to have 67 votes for it. There aren’t 67 votes for this thing anymore, whatever, no matter how you do it. But that isn’t gonna happen because the Corker bill takes the treaty aspect out of this.
It just turns it upside down on purpose.
So the overriding point here is there is a way to stop this and simply say, “Obama did not meet the condition he had to satisfy in order to lift the sanctions.” If the sanctions stay in place, then you’re gonna have one ticked-off Ayatollah Khamenei. You’re gonna have one ticked off Rouhani. And they’re not gonna agree to this deal whatsoever because the big part of this deal to them is getting the sanctions lifted and having their assets unfrozen. That’s, what, a hundred, $150 billion immediately at their disposal that we hold.
And if anything happens to freeze that, if anything happens that keeps that money out of their hands and keeps sanctions on them, they’re not gonna agree to the rest of the deal, and they oppose it. They stop it. Now, the Republicans are obviously afraid of what’s gonna happen. I don’t think that there is a blanket explanation for Republican behavior. For example, “Rush, why aren’t they gonna try to stop Obamacare?” There’s an answer to that.
“Well, Rush, why aren’t they gonna try to stop the Iran deal.” There’s a separate answer to that. It’s not just they’re afraid of the media; it’s not just they’re afraid of being called racists. It’s each issue presents a different set of fears. Included in the list of fears could well be the fact that they just don’t want the of having their fingerprints on this. I’ve got a new name for ’em, the No Fingerprints Caucus.
If something doesn’t go Obama’s way, they don’t want their fingerprints on it, is what they know is gonna happen. They know everybody — Josh Earnest the White House, the press secretary; Obama; John Kerry — they’re all running around. The Iranians are celebrating, popping champagne, and they’re drinking to a secure new deal, and everybody’s happy.
“It’s never been done before, and Obama’s once again accomplished something no American president before him ever did,” and the Republicans say, “We’re gonna be the ones to spoil this party. No way! We don’t want that on our shoulders. We don’t want the media ripping us. We don’t want Obama ripping us. We don’t the Iranians mad at us.”
And it seems to be one of the primary influences governing their lack of opposition to anything Obama. It’s almost as though they’ve just decided whatever he does he’s gonna do and we’ll just wait ’til we get the White House and then we’ll do what we’re gonna do. You know, the other option you could say, you could declare that the president hasn’t fulfilled the terms of the Corker Bill. The Senate could declare the Iran deal a treaty, because that’s what it is, as per the Constitution, have a vote immediately. When it fails to get 67 votes, declare it null and void. There’s also that approach.
But the Corker Bill kind of stands the treaty process on its head, upside down, which is why the other approach here has been suggested. But it’s clear, McCarthy refers to this as the Republican Party surrender and then pretend fight. He says the way to characterize what the Republicans do is they cave on everything but then they act and pretend like they’re fighting and they act and pretend like they’re mad and they act and pretend like they’re doing everything they can to stop it, but they just fall short. Well, we need the Senate. Well, we need to the White House. Well, we need a couple of more votes. There’s always an excuse. But the first thing that always happens is surrender, and then they pretend that they’re fighting for, or against it, whichever the case may be.
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