The voice in Chuck’s ear
IMAGINE an alternative scenario. Instead of Barack Obama in the White House, it is a Republican president who negotiated the Iran deal and now demands Sen. Chuck Schumer’s support. What would Schumer do?
The answer is obvious — he’d say no, the deal stinks. Unfortunately, that scenario makes it just as obvious what Schumer will do in reality.
Tip O’Neill was wrong. All politics are not local. All politics are personal.
The career of Democrat Schumer is best served by standing with Democrat Obama. That is what he will do. Everything else is detail.
He is the party’s anointed leader in the Senate, and breaking with a Democratic president on a signature, legacy issue would be so huge as to jeopardize the position he has craved and earned. Obama would see the act as unforgivable treason and demand a replacement.
“Sometimes party loyalty asks too much,” John F. Kennedy said. This is one of those times.
But party loyalty is a euphemism for personal ambition. Schumer is now a macher, soon to become the most important and powerful Jewish pol in America.
Yet that power ultimately requires conformity. He lost his right to be a rebel the minute he decided he wanted to be a party leader.
Not that he was ever much of a rebel in any event. His reputation for being a motormouth camera hog notwithstanding, there isn’t a single important time when he went against Obama. He’s all in for all tax hikes, even as they take money that could have been spent in New York and ship it to Washington bureaucrats.
The one time Schumer publicly protested came after Dems lost the Senate in 2014, when he belatedly complained that the early pushp for ObamaCare was a political mistake. He said the party “put all of our focus on the wrong problem — healthcare reform.”
He was right, with the unpopular law costing Dems both houses in consecutive midterms. But it was an especially odd thing for him to say because Schumer had voted for ObamaCare!
He may not be a yes man, but he’s a yes vote. And despite the stakes on Iran — indeed, because of the stakes — he will not jump ship now.
The pressure on him is enormous. The White House expects his support, while television, newspaper and digital ads urge Americans, especially Jews, to call Schumer’s office and tell him tto kill the deal. The pressure has grown a Liebermans former Sen. andJoe oothers identified Schumer as the key to delivering enough Senate Dems to decide thhe issue. Many predict Schumer will vote against the deal in the first round, but support an Obama veto, and thus help deliver final approval. That might happen, but I’m inclined to think he won’t play that game. It would heighten the pressure on him from both sides, so I expect him to vote with Obama in the first round.
Perhaps I deceive myself, but I think the old Chuck Schumer would spit on the Iran deal rather than support it. That Chuck Schumer was a selfdescribed security hawk, for both the United States and Israel.
He was cleareyed that both countries were in the crosshairs of radical Islamists, whethersL it was al Qaeda or Hamas. That Schumer wouldn’t consider rolling the dice on Iran reforming itself, and would never support letting the mullahs have a path to the bomb if a Republican president were pushing thedeal.
But Schumer is now a party man in a polarized era, and Democrats are the party of Obama. Even as a relatively unpopular lame duck, the president has kept Dems unified. The Asian trade deal looked like it was dead, but Obama rallied enough members to stick with him and, with Republican help, got it passed.
Iran is a bigger challenge, with polls showing that the more people know about the nuclear deal, the more they oppose it. The constant “Death to America” chants coming from Tehran don’t help Obama.
Opponents will devote the next six weeks to spreading the dirty details, including the secret side deals between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency that the White House says it doesn’t have and cannot turn over to Congress.
Yet even that is a sideshow to the fundamental problem. The deal does nothing to stop Iran’s terrorist aggression around the world and, in fact, helps to fund it by lifting sanctions. And at the end, Iran will get its nukes under the auspices of America and the United Nations.
Schumer could stop that. Or he could win real power. He can’t do both, so he’ll take the power.
He’ll do what he did with ObamaCare: Support it now, criticize it later. That’s personal politics at work.