Written by By Manu Raju and J. Taylor Rushing | Posted: 02/14/08 07:34 PM [ET]
Senate Republicans are circling their wagons around Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — a significant strategic shift to protect their presumptive presidential nominee and leave President Bush more isolated.
Senate Republicans are circling their wagons around Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — a significant strategic shift to protect their presumptive presidential nominee and leave President Bush more isolated.
They opted to avoid a showdown with Democrats on Wednesday over an intelligence bill dealing with torture. By punting the issue to the White House, the GOP helped shield McCain from claims he and his party condone waterboarding, which simulates drowning, and other harsh interrogation methods.
Instead of blocking passage of the bill using procedural maneuvers, Republicans let it come to a vote. It cleared along party lines, 51-45, and now goes to President Bush, who has promised a veto.
Republican aides and Democratic senators say this deflects blame onto Bush and helps McCain and vulnerable Republican lawmakers avoid a snare on the campaign trail.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), sponsor of language that would ban waterboarding by the CIA, told The Hill she was surprised that Republicans failed to put up a fight or strike her provision from the bill. Political considerations clearly played a role in the GOP strategy, she said.
“They didn’t want a clear, recorded vote that spoke to the issue,” Feinstein commented. “In this way, they can say, ‘I’m against waterboarding’ and still vote for the bill. I don’t agree with that.”
Now that McCain is the presumptive nominee, said GOP aides, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will increasingly coordinate strategy with McCain on high-profile bills.
Deferring to McCain on votes follows his recent endorsement by the Senate and House GOP leadership. McCain’s principal rival for the nomination, former Gov. Mitt. Romney (Mass.), endorsed him Thursday.
Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for the group Human Rights Watch, said of the interrogation strategy,
“The message the Republicans sent to the president is that if you want the right to waterboard prisoners, we’re not going to stick our necks out for you.”
Pulling back from a showdown also suggests that McCain, who has repeatedly broken with his party over the issue of detainee treatment, may be more intent heading into the election on rallying Republicans than on burnishing his independent credentials.
McCain’s vote against the underlying bill has sparked criticism from Democrats, who say it shows that he is pandering to the conservative base and flip-flopping on one of his signature issues.
McCain told The Hill that while he opposes torture in general and waterboarding in particular, he does not agree with a uniform set of policies that applies equally to spy agencies. He noted that the 2005 law he wrote with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on detainee policy distinctly separated the CIA and the military in terms of interrogation rules.
“The CIA ought to have additional techniques,” McCain said.
Publicly, Republicans say presidential politics had nothing to do with their strategy and that Bush had already planned to veto the bill. But a veto might have been avoided had Republicans used parliamentary maneuvers to force Democrats to drop the language on torture.
Republicans complain that Democrats are mischaracterizing the provision, which would apply the Army’s Field Manual not just to the military but to all government agencies, including the CIA. The government says it no longer waterboards prisoners even though it carried out the practice on several detainees after Sept. 11, 2001.
Enacting the provision would be bad policy, Republicans say, because it could hamstring federal agents, allow terrorists to learn about secret interrogation methods — the field manual is published — and improperly set a one-size-fits-all policy for an array of agencies.
“There isn’t anybody that you can say is a stronger objector to torture or has expressed himself more strongly than Sen. McCain,” said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the minority whip. “His vote against the bill makes a strong statement that this isn’t about torture, but about applying a set of standards that the Army uses to other agencies where it’s totally not applicable.”
Republicans had more than enough votes Wednesday to force Democrats to drop the provision if they had wanted to do so. It takes 60 votes to pass controversial legislation.
Republicans also had several options to kill the bill. Under new rules, they could have raised a point of order to strike the Feinstein provision because it was added in conference but not originally included in either the House or Senate bill.
Sixty votes would be needed to override the point of order.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Democrats were surprised that Republicans decided against such a move.
“We expected it for several days,” Durbin said. “From the outside, there may have been some presidential calculations.”
Republicans also could have threatened to filibuster the bill, a regular move employed by the minority, to stall the measure until Democrats dropped the provision.
Even though Republican leaders insisted Thursday that the veto strategy was not calculated to limit fallout, vulnerable GOP senators recognized the political risk they faced by a vote to kill the anti-torture language.
“There’s a political skewering going on here,” said Sen. Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican who faces a tough reelection race in November. “But in the end, when John McCain says he’s against waterboarding but this vote isn’t about that, I’m certainly comfortable with that.”
Coleman voted against the bill, as did vulnerable Republican Sen. John Sununu (N.H.). Two other endangered Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine and Gordon Smith of Oregon — supported the bill’s passage.
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