Liberal journalists have come up with an unconvincing new spin on how the open letter signed by 47 Senate Republicans to the leaders of Iran is "unprecedented." It's because 47 politicians signed it. So every time Sen. Tom Cotton talked another colleague into signing on to this letter, he was multiplying the "unprecedented" argument used by Democrats and their "objective" media enablers.
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank trotted out this defense on The Steve Malzberg Show on Newsmax TV on Thursday. First, he argued like Bill Clinton that it depends on the definition of "it" where precedent is concerned. Malzberg cited Sen. Ted Kennedy's letter to the Soviets before the 1984 campaign, Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria in 2007, and at a later point, Speaker Jim Wright's "Dear Comandante" letter to Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega (signed by ten members of Congress) in 1984.
MALZBERG: The press is acting and the Left is acting like this never happened before, when it’s happened multiple times and Democrats have been guilty.
MILBANK: Well, I mean, it depends on what “it” is here. So, I mean, look. I think anybody who’s now shocked that politics doesn’t stop at the water’s edge hasn’t been paying attention for the last 20 years. Politics crossed the oceans a very long time ago. I don’t think, it’s not as if this is the first time politics has been injected into international affairs. I think it is another step beyond all of those things you’re talking about, because this is 47 of 54 Republican senators. This is basically the majority of the Senate speaking in one voice, moving in a very specific way to undercut the executive. So I think it’s by matter of degree that it doesn’t have a precedent.
Milbank claimed if just Ted Cruz and a few others had written this, it wouldn’t be talked about, but instead, just seven Republicans abstained, and “serious grownups” like Mitch McConnell and John McCain signed on.
In his column in The Washington Post, Milbank made no attempt to address Kennedy, Pelosi, or Jim Wright’s “Dear Comandante” letter. He made fun about finding fake examples from the 1700s or the 1800s or World War II. He explained it this way:
It’s true that 47 Republican senators did their level best to bring us closer to war by writing a letter to Iran’s mullahs, attempting to scuttle nuclear talks with the United States. But Republicans aren’t exactly subverting the United States. It’s more as if they’re operating their own independent republic on Capitol Hill. Call it the State of Republicania.
Then he amuses himself by imagining what this foolish “Republicania” would be like, and who would hold what job. He claimed this was all about pleasing defense contractors:
There is a potential problem with this model, because Republicania would refuse to levy any taxes. But it appears that Cotton, the recently elected senator from Arkansas, has figured this out, too: He’ll get military contractors to bankroll the new nation.
On Tuesday, the day after his letter to Hezbollah’s masters became public, Cotton provided a clue about his motives: He’d had a breakfast date with the National Defense Industrial Association — a trade group for Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and the like.
You’re not allowed to know what Cotton said to the defense contractors. The event was “off the record and strictly non-attribution.” But you can bet it was what Dwight Eisenhower meant when he warned of the military-industrial complex.
The column concluded by praising the seven Republican non-signers as the real Americans:
Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), one of just seven Republican senators not to sign Cotton’s letter to the ayatollahs, said she thought it “more appropriate for members of the Senate to give advice to the president” and U.S. negotiators.
Spoken like a true American — which, in the corridors of Republicania these days, is nigh unto treason.
