DRONE DEBATE OPENS A GOP DIVIDE
The White House gives the program’s foes some assurances after Republicans’ rare dispute over defense.
WASHINGTON — A heated debate over the potential use of unmanned drones against Americans suspected as enemy combatants in the United States ended Thursday, after a rare anti-terrorism policy clarification by the Obama administration and the Senate confirmation of CIA nominee John Brennan.
But by then it had laid bare a split within the GOP between libertarian values and the party’s ref lexive commitment to national defense.
The clear winner after the dust settled Thursday was Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky from the GOP’s tea party wing, who had delayed Brennan’s confirmation as CIA director with an oldstyle filibuster that lasted into the wee hours.
After hurried consultations with White House officials, Paul got the answer he was demanding from the Obama administration: a letter stating that the president cannot order the targeted killing on American soil of a citizen who is not engaged in combat against the United States.
The letter cleared the way for Brennan, chief architect of the administration’s drone program, to be confirmed, 63 to 34. In the final vote, 13 Republicans voted for Brennan and 31 opposed him.
“Hurray,” said Paul, when the letter from Atty.
Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. was read to him during a Fox News interview. Earlier in the week, the administration had appeared to leave the question of targeted killings on U.S. soil at least theoretically open.
“For 13 hours yesterday we asked him that question, and so there is a result and a victory,” Paul said. “Under duress and under public humiliation, the White House will respond and do the right thing.”
White House officials and their allies in the Senate said that the letter simply made explicit and public what the policy had been all along. The situation Paul had hypothesized during his filibuster — a drone strike against an American merely suspected of involvement in terrorism — “will never happen in the United States of America,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I hope this puts this [question] to an end.”
Paul’s filibuster, at 13 hours the longest in the Senate in decades, initially drew support only from a few fellow tea party senators and congressmen. As Wednesday evening wore on, however, and Paul’s performance drew increasing attention on cable TV and social networks, more-established Republicans added their voices in a series of unusual late-night appearances. Among them were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and two of the dozen Republican senators who had dined with Obama earlier in the evening at a downtown hotel.
Republican hawks, clearly concerned that Paul had stolen their thunder, struck back Thursday with Senate speeches lacerating their junior colleague.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said the question that Paul was pursuing was “offensive,” and he suggested partisan motives.
“I don’t remember any of you suggesting that President Bush was going to kill someone with a drone,” Graham said, addressing fellow Republican senators. “What are we up to here?”
A visibly angry Sen. John McCain of Arizona weighed in with a Senate speech: “I don’t think what happened yesterday is helpful to the American people.”
Paul’s suggestion that law-abiding citizens needed to fear attack from their own government “brings the conversation from a serious discussion … to the realm of the ridiculous,” McCain said.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, which has considerable inf luence among Republicans, accused Paul of “showmanship” and staging a “political stunt.”
The fight has potential to inf luence not only the debate over the future of the GOP but the next presidential contest, already in its earliest stages. Paul, son of former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, is a likely 2016 candidate.
His success in capitalizing on the drone issue stood in sharp contrast to the offkey efforts this week of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who stumbled over his position on immigration as he signaled that he was open to a 2016 run.
During Paul’s filibuster, the Senate GOP’s campaign arm started a “Stand with Rand!” fundraising effort online, picking up the hash tag that was trending throughout the night on Twitter. The action by the National Republican Senatorial Committee surprised some GOP veterans in the capital.
“I would not have automatically expected that,” said Vin Weber, a GOP advisor and former congressman. “The use of drones is a national security tool, and normally Republicans’ first reaction is to be supportive of executive power in the use of national security tools.”
The drone debate wasn’t the first recent departure from Republicans’ longdominant position on national defense. Last month, Republicans in Congress allowed automatic spending reductions to take effect that cut more deeply into defense than the rest of the federal budget.
Meantime, civil libertarians on the left joined tea party supporters in praising Paul’s efforts. The antiwar group Code Pink sent flowers and candy to his office.
“It was a courageous and historic filibuster,” said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “The issue has really exploded with the American public, particularly among conservatives who are very concerned about what looks like a grab of authority to kill.”
Others suggested that the debate over drones could mark the start of an effort by both Republicans and Democrats to reclaim some of the power that Congress had ceded to the executive branch since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The debate “about the balance between liberty and security is a bipartisan concern,” said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who has pushed for more information about the legal underpinnings of Obama’s policy on targeted killings. “I think you’re going to start seeing the emergence of what I sometimes call around here a ‘checks and balances caucus,’ and there will be a lot of Democrats.”
But Jim Manley, who spent 21 years as a Democratic Senate staff member, expressed concern that Paul’s success could worsen the deadlock in Congress by sparking a new wave of mar- athon debates.
“I’m worried that he and his colleagues are going to take away the wrong lessons from last night,” he said. “In the 24-hour media environment, with the Twitterverse and everything else, it’s so much easier to demagogue than it ever was before.”