Remember last year when Republicans were aghast at all the sidedeals on health care? Remember when Republicans railed against pork barrel spending and argued for a laser like focus on deficits? Well hypocrisy knows no bounds. The sunbelt shakedown is now in full effect.

Senator Kerry just announced today that he would delay the Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote on the New START Treaty. The delay is not because the treaty wouldn’t pass out of committee, it is because the White House and Kerry are close to getting more Republicans – Senators Corker and Isakson are basically supportive of the treaty, but were allegedly upset about having a vote as they claimed to have a few outstanding questions that they wanted answered from the Administration before voting. The timeline for the committee was always tight, so a delay is not a real surprise.

But the delay in the vote has really nothing to do with process or rushing. Mitch McConnell yesterday made it abundantly clear what the hold up is about – the GOP (and more specifically Senator Jon Kyl) hasn’t been bought off yet. Corker himself noted last week, he supports the treaty but is following Kyl’s lead and holding out for more pork. McConnell told Reuters in a shocking degree of candor:

The only way this treaty gets in trouble is if it’s rushed… My advice to the president was, don’t try to jam it, answer all the requests, and let’s take our time and do it right.

And by doing “it right,” McConnell explicitly says buy off Kyl with nuclear pork:

All they have to do is find enough money to satisfy Senator Kyl that they are prepared to do what they said they would do… If it’s important to you, you can find a way, in an over a trillion dollar discretionary budget to fund it. In my view they need to do that, because without that I think the chances of ratification are pretty slim.

What does McConnell’s statement tell us:

First, there are no more substantive objections to the treaty. Mitt Romney and Heritage failed to convince GOP Senators that the treaty could be opposed on substantive grounds. Save for Senators DeMint and Inhofe, almost no GOP Senators are opposing the treaty on the merits. McConnell just threatened to cause the treaty “trouble” for no substantive reason. This is no longer a debate about the treaty.

Second, the GOP cares more about the politics of process than about US national security. When Anthony Wiener went ballistic on the floor of the House because House Republicans refused to vote for health care funding for 9-11 workers, it exposed the do nothing obstructionist bent of the GOP even when it comes to 9-11. Similarly, the one thing you would hope the GOP wouldn’t mess with is nuclear stability. Yet without the New START treaty in place the US military is rapidly losing its knowledge of and intelligence about the Russian nuclear arsenal because since the original START treaty expired last December the US no longer has boots on the ground monitoring what Russia is doing with its nuclear weapons. When weapons are on hair trigger alert and in 30 minutes entire cities could be destroyed the last thing you want is to have decreased knowledge and confidence. This is why our military is adamant about the treaty.

With all the complaints about “rushing” the Foreign Relations committee has done little else but talk about START in the last few months, as it has held nearly 20 hearings. The treaty has been so thoroughly covered that nothing new is being said about the treaty. Yet to gum up the process, it seems GOP Senators belatedly submitted questions to the Administration that they could not be expected to deliver in time. These delaying tactics will likely only continue further in September.

Third, it is all about nuclear pork. McConnell’s statement clearly indicates that support for START is all about whether Kyl is satisfied with nuclear modernization funding. Yet even neocon hawk Bob Kagan said that tying START to nuclear modernization funding was ridiculous: “The issue has nothing to do with New START’s intrinsic strengths or weaknesses.” Furthermore, the Administration has already pushed through a massive 15% increase. Yet Kyl and his colleagues are demanding more. Corker’s chief interest, for instance, is the Uranium Processing Facility in Oak Ridge, TN, which Corker seemingly arbitrarily determined needs between $4-$5 billion, well above the projected $1.4-$3.5 billion that the facility’s own contractor projects. He concedes, however, that “certainly, there’s no official estimate” but nevertheless said “it’s very likely” he would support the treaty if he got the funding.

Fourth, it’s a massive slap in the face of Richard Lugar and shows the far-right direction the Senate GOP has taken. McConnell’s interview basically says if Kyl is given what he wants than everyone will fall into line. But there is no mention of Richard Lugar who is a strong supporter of the treaty. This demonstrates where the ideological direction the GOP is headed. McConnell neglects (and seemingly rejects) his party’s foremost authority on nuclear weapons issues in the Senate, in favor of the far right approach of Kyl who advocates building and explosively testing new nuclear weapons. It also shows how impotent Lugar is in influencing his colleagues.

Yesterday, the Bay Area Houston blog noted that top Texas donors of the GOP appear to have an immigration stance that runs directly counter to the one held by the Republican Party. Nonetheless, they continue pouring thousands upon thousands of dollars into funding candidates who fight for nativist immigration policies that run counter to their business interests. The Dallas Morning News recently ran an op-ed jointly authored by over 30 Texas businessmen making the case for why “Americans must face up to the reality of the foreign workers we need to keep the economy growing”:

We own and run a variety of businesses: agriculture, food processing, hospitality, construction, banking and more, mostly but not exclusively in Texas. And we know, if not firsthand, certainly at close reach, just how much the economy depends on immigrant labor. [...]

As chairmen, CEOs and stockholders, we call on Congress to act – to go back to Washington and pass realistic immigration reform that provides the workers we need to keep our businesses growing. [...] Neither the immigrants here today nor those we will need in the future should have to live in the shadows. These are good people with good values doing work that we need done, reaching for the American Dream and helping make it a reality for all. As we value the work, let us value the worker – and let’s fix the law so that it serves all Americans.

However, despite calling on Congress to “pass realistic immigration reform,” many of those wealthy Texas businessmen have donated thousands of dollars to a party that hasn’t only blocked any chance of comprehensive immigration reform, it’s also actively working to pass anti-immigrant, restrictionist policies that will make it even harder for them to do business. In all fairness, many of the businessmen donated funds to pro-immigrant Democrats as well — however those donations paled in comparison. Instead, many of them helped get several Republican candidates get elected and continue supporting the GOP throughout 2010, despite it’s swing to the far right on immigration.

Bob Perry of Perry Homes tops the list with $134,600 in the year 2010 alone. Over $65,000 of Perry’s money went directly to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which presumably provides strategic support to Republican senators who have done nothing but stall and obstruct Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) efforts to propose and enact comprehensive immigration reform. An additional thousand dollars went to Sen. David Vitter’s (R-LA) campaign, despite the fact that he recently tried to block federal funding of the Justice Department’s lawsuit against SB-1070 and “led the assault” on immigration reform in 2007.

Similarly, Billy Joe “Red” McCombs, founder of the Red McCombs Automotive Group and co-founder of Clear Channel Communications has donated a total of $10,000 to the NRSC. However, McCombs most shocking contribution was to immigration zealot Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). Woody Hunt of Hunt Construction has donated $60,800 to the NRSC this year as of April 2010. Hunt also donated almost $10,000 to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) who recently accused President Obama of “pandering to Hispanics” by “pretending” he’s going to do something about immigration. Bob Barnes, chief executive of Schlotzsky’s restaurant chain, donated $15,000 to the NRSC in March 2010 and an additional $15,000 to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who has firmly refused to work with Democrats on immigration reform.

Ultimately, it’s probably safe to say that these Texas businessmen represent just a small cross section of a business executives who advocate for and profit from sensible immigration policies while simultaneously funding a party with an immigration platform based in xenophobic pandering and nativist fear-mongering. While the Republican Party certainly defends other corporate interests, it seems that if corporate America really prioritizes immigration reform — one of the hot button issues of this election season — it would start putting its money where its mouth is. As long as the money rolls in and the cheap political points are scored, lawmakers will continue to deny businesses and the American people of the immigration reform the country needs.

The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens takes a break from promoting war with Iran to argue that the U.S. must, for the sake of our reputation, stay in Afghanistan. Reprimanding his fellow conservatives who are growing frustrated with the effort there, Stephens warns “The U.S. cannot remain a superpower if the suspicion takes root that we are a feckless nation that can be stampeded into surrender by a domestic caucus of defeatists.”

Allies or would-be allies will make their own calculations and hedge their bets. Why should we be surprised that this is precisely what Pakistan has done vis-a-vis the Taliban? It’s not as if the U.S. hasn’t abandoned that corner of the world before to its furies.

How a feckless America is perceived by its friends is equally material to how we are perceived by our enemies. In his 1996 fatwa declaring war on the U.S., Osama bin Laden took note of American withdrawals from Beirut in 1983 and Mogadishu a decade later. “When tens of your soldiers were killed in minor battles and one American pilot was dragged through the streets… you withdrew, the extent of your impotence and weakness became very clear.” Is it the new conservative wisdom to prove bin Laden’s point (one that the hard men in Tehran undoubtedly share), only on a vastly greater scale?

I’ve always found it interesting how, for pro-war types like Stephens, these sorts of “reputation” arguments always only go one way: Toward more war. The only way we can show enemies and allies what we’re made of is to continue fighting, continue expending vast resources, even as the strategy is failing, even as our own economy is in crisis. It just never seems to occur to them that ensnaring the U.S. in hugely expensive, open-ended military interventions could also be a goal of our enemies, or that persisting in an intervention that has begun to prove counterproductive is itself a form of fecklessness.

It’s true that in his 1996 fatwa, Osama bin Laden mocked the U.S. for withdrawing from Somalia. But more recently, in November 2004, he also mocked the U.S. for how easy it was for Al Qaeda “to provoke and bait” the U.S. into military action:

BIN LADEN: All that we have to do is to send two Mujahedin to the farthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qa’ida in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human economic and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits to their private companies. [...]

So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. [...]

And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the Mujahedin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan with Allah’s permission… And it all shows that the real loser is you. It’s the American people and their economy.

So which of bin Laden’s points should we not be trying to prove?