Yesterday I reported on the release of the new report Sharia: The Threat To America (pdf), released by the neoconservative Center for Security Policy, led by conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney.

Unsurprisingly, given some of the characters involved in its writing (Gaffney admitted to me that no actual Islamic scholars were consulted, which seems odd for a report on Islamic law), the report is a stew of unscholarly assertions about Islam and wildly paranoid claims about the threat posed by sharia-adherent — read: observant — Muslims to the United States. It throws disparate and competing Muslim groups and movements (Al Qaeda, Iran, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood) together under one heading — “sharia” — and then basically asserts that every pious Muslim in America is a potential fifth columnist.

Indeed, the report even asserts that some of those fifth columnists could be inside the Obama administration. Under the section entitled “The Iran Lobby,” (pg. 98) the authors write, “It is of considerable concern that individuals associated with the Iran Lobby network… have found their way into influential posts in the Obama administration”:

Even as events in the Middle East move inexorably toward renewed conflict and Iran defiantly accelerates its nuclear weapons program, such “friends of Iran” as Dr. Vali Nasr (now the senior advisor to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke for Afghanistan/Pakistan issues), Dr. Susan Rice (U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations) and John Limbert (until July 2010 a top official at the State Department’s Iran desk)– have helped ensure that U.S. policy towards Iran remains incoherent and contrary to long-term U.S. national security interests.

The magnitude of damage Iranian elements are capable of perpetrating in America in furtherance of their shariah agenda is greater if, as seems to be the case, senior U.S. national security policymaking circles have been penetrated by agents of influence — be they witting or unwitting — whose actions, intentional or otherwise, serve to support the objectives of a hostile foreign power. To date, there is no evidence that such a possibility has been seriously considered, let alone thwarted by American counter-intelligence.

If Gaffney and his crew want to criticize the administration for having an incoherent Iran policy, that’s one thing. I’d probably agree with them on some points. But accusing U.S. government officials of working to “ensure that U.S. policy towards Iran” is “contrary to long-term U.S. national security interests” is a serious charge, which, probably needless to say, the authors don’t come close to backing up. But these sorts of irresponsible, unsubstantiated assertions are very much in keeping with the rest of the report.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee just voted 14-4 to approve the New START Treaty. The treaty got strong bipartisan support with Republicans Bob Corker (R-TN), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), and Richard Lugar (R-IN) all voting in support. This is a huge accomplishment and should make the ratification by the full Senate all but inevitable.

The Foreign Relations committee was not friendly territory for this treaty. It is packed on the Republican side with very conservative Senators from Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Idaho, and Indiana. These states are anything about liberal. While Richard Lugar has long been a leader on nuclear issues, getting Corker and Isakson is a real coup and clears the path for more moderate Senate Republicans to vote for the treaty.

To get to 67 senators, all the Administration needs is at least 5 more Republicans in addition to Lugar, Corker, and Isakson – there are 59 votes from the non-Republican Senators. There are at least three likely votes from Republicans from New England (Snowe (R-ME), Collins (R-ME), Brown (R-MA)), Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Bob Bennett (R-UT) have already said they hope to support it. With those 8 Republicans the START treaty would pass. In addition to those eight though, Senators Voinovich (R-OH), Hatch (R-UT), Grassley (R-IA), Gregg (R-NH), Murkowski (R-AK), Lemieux (R-FL), McCain (R-AZ), Graham (R-SC), and Cochran (R-MS) are all potential yes votes as well. In other words, now that Corker and Isakson have in a sense broken the dam of Republican resistance, getting to 67 is not as arduous as it may have once seemed.

But there is a chance that the Democrats in the Senate will grab defeat from the jaws of victory.

Instead, of fast-tracking the treaty to the floor and getting it done, Senator Kerry and Senator Lugar both called for it to wait until after the election when the partisan climate will apparently have cooled. This is a mistake. Their argument makes much less sense in the aftermath of the committee vote. We are – at this very moment – in the midst of a heated partisan election environment and the treaty just got two very conservative southern Republicans to vote for it. Also, it is not as if the New START treaty is setting the campaign trail ablaze.

The momentum is on the treaty’s side now and it is unknown how Republicans will react to voting for the treaty in the lame duck. Additionally, after the November election the Republican presidential primary will begin in earnest and, as Mitt Romney op-ed in July reminds us, this could become easy right-wing political fodder.

In fact, the political moment may be ideal for Reid to bring up the treaty. Many Republicans in the Senate are smarting after tea party extremist Christine O’Donnell’s victory, which has only made Republicans look even more extreme. New START could give Republicans an opportunity to demonstrate a degree of moderation and seriousness about governing, especially to pundits inside the beltway like David Broder.

And while Republicans may fear giving Obama a “victory” before the election, if the treaty was backed by the Republican leadership of Kyl and McConnell it would likely garner around 90 votes – essentially denying the Administration its ability to claim a partisan victory. The Administration might point to New START’s ratification as an accomplishment, but Republicans could easily adopt the pro-START talking points – this was a modest treaty that is merely extending a treaty negotiated by Ronald Reagan. New START would hardly be something that the Obama administration could campaign on in the November elections, nor is it that politically salient.

This scenario may sound preposterous, but the fact is that many (if not a majority) of Republicans don’t want to vote against this treaty. A year ago Jon Kyl even warned of the dangers of the expiration of the START treaty and one wonders if Kyl didn’t give tacit approval to Corker and Isakson to vote for the treaty – after all Corker was pretty much in lock step with Kyl before the August recess. It’s clear that Kyl wants to essentially hold this treaty hostage in an effort to kill off Obama’s larger nuclear agenda and if he is able to delay vote into the new year that is exactly what he will do. But Democrats should know that they have the leverage of being able to force a vote on something that the majority of Republicans don’t really want to vote against.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) co-sponsored the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act in 2005, 2006, and 2007. Yet, when Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) announced on Wednesday that he would be introducing a defense authorization bill next week that includes the DREAM Act, McCain blasted him:

The Arizona Republican, who is ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said Democrats were using the defense measure as a tool to push liberal agenda items in the runup to the midterm elections.

“So I intend to block it, unless they agree to remove these onerous provisions,” he said. [...]

“It’s a pure political act for Harry Reid, who is worried about his own re-election and that of the Democrats in the Senate,” McCain said.

Certainly, Reid made a political calculation when he decided to introduce the DREAM Act this September. However, McCain is in no place to call the kettle black. In Nevada, Reid is facing a tough reelection bid against tea party sweetheart Sharron Angle (R-NV). In Arizona, McCain was also fighting for his political livelihood in his primary election against anti-immigrant zealot J.D. Hayworth, which McCain eventually won just a few weeks ago. However, the major difference is that while Reid has traditionally been a supporter of the immigration measures he is embracing this year, McCain’s election strategy has involved a total flip-flop on the immigration issue in an effort to gain votes.

McCain not only co-sponsored DREAM Act legislation in the not-too-distant past, he was also behind comprehensive immigration reform efforts that included a path to legalization. McCain once insisted that a border crackdown would do nothing to solve the nation’s immigration problem, calling an “enforcement-first” strategy an “ineffective and ill-advised approach.” During his 2008 presidential bid, McCain told Latino voters, “I do ask for your trust that when I say, I remain committed to fair, practical and comprehensive immigration reform, I mean it. I think I have earned that trust.”

Throughout the midterm election season, McCain has engaged in political backflips to redefine himself as an immigration hawk. Now, McCain insists that the border must be secured before Congress can undertake immigration reform, telling a group of DREAM students last week that, “We’re going to have to secure the borders first, and then enact comprehensive immigration, but the border has to be secured first.” “There is a lot of flip-flopping going on in the McCain campaign,” said his opponent, Hayworth, during the primary campaign.

In a statement released today, Reid said “Senator McCain should know better than anyone that patriots who step up to serve our grateful nation should be offered a path to citizenship, and that anyone who volunteers to serve should be welcomed regardless of their sexual orientation. I hope that he will do the right thing and support this bill that not only funds critical support for our troops like weapons upgrades and pay raises, but also ensures that our military reflects our nation’s values.”

The New START treaty just crossed a major hurdle. Senator Bob Corker and Senator Johnny Isakson joined with Senator Lugar in supporting the New START treaty in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote this morning. In this heated partisan climate, this is a tremendous achievement and should make the ratification of New START all but inevitable on the Senate floor.

Most political pundits doubted the ability of the administration and Senators Richard Lugar (R-IN) and John Kerry (D-MA) to convince Republicans to vote for the treaty. Yet a weight of evidence was built up and strong grassroots efforts were mobilized such that opposition to the treaty was only taken up by the most extreme.

The civil war within the Republican party that has now been exposed by the victory of Christine O’Donnell over moderate Mike Castle in Delaware yesterday has been present from the beginning in the debate over New START.

The New START treaty has been supported by the most senior former Republican national security officials and has the unanimous support of the military. However, it faced opposition from the far-right on ideological grounds. The Heritage Foundation sought to mobilize tea-party supporters. Its fellow James Carafano pleaded for tea-party support in column after column. Much was made of the Heritage Foundation’s new action fund Heritage Action For America which sought to tap into the tea-party energy and made killing START at the top of its priorities. Far right Republican Senators like Jim DeMint and James Inhofe almost immediately opposed the treaty on largely ideological grounds – Demint for instance wants to target our missile defenses against Russia, essentially creating a new nuclear arms race.

These right-wing opponents sought to nitpick the treaty to death about missile defense and nuclear forces, but as the facts came out it became increasingly clear none of these arguments held any water. This was most evident by Mitt Romney’s foray into the debate in July. His Washington Post op-ed was riddled with errors and was so extreme that he got hit from all sides.

By the end of July the majority of Republicans in the Senate that were engaged on New START had stopped making substantive arguments against the treaty. Instead, many issued positive statements that they supported the treaty and were hoping to vote for it – these senators included Corker, Isakson, Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Bob Bennett (R-UT), and even Jon Kyl (R-AZ). There was a catch however. And that was Republicans were tying the treaty to more funding for the nuclear weapons complex – an issue that has nothing to do with the specifics of the treaty. While the fight over nuclear funding is ongoing, what is clear is that the far-right failed to win over their party and convince them to blanketly oppose the treaty on ideological grounds.

With the vote of Corker and Isakson, it’s clear the far-right’s effort to mobilize their tea-party base and hold the line on New START has failed.