Samantha Power, the nominee to replace Susan Rice as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, appears to be winning over key voices on the right, raising the possibility of a relatively smooth confirmation.

Unlike with many of President Obama’s recent nominees, including Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and several other nominations throughout the executive branch, Republicans and conservatives seem to be pausing before going on the attack in the case of Power.

Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will be key in having Power make it through his committee. When asked for comment, Corker seemed open to the idea of Power taking over at the U.N. “I don’t know Samantha Power personally, but now that the president has nominated her to the U.N., I look forward to meeting her to understand her views and review her record as the Senate considers her nomination for this important foreign policy position,” Corker said in an emailed statement.

One vote that Power has already won over is that of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), another member of the Foreign Relations Committee. McCain in a statement called Power “well-qualified for this important position and hope the Senate will move forward on her nomination as soon as possible.” McCain had previously led a smear campaign against Ambassador Rice after news that Obama might nominate her as the next Secretary of State. Obama also announced today that Rice will come to the White House to be the next national security adviser, a position that does not require Senate confirmation.

Neoconservative pundit Max Boot, liberal groups like the United Nations Foundation, and the Anti-Defamation League have also offered support for Power’s nomination. This could prove key in an institution where dozens of Obama nominees languish for lack of a vote, including several key sub-Cabinet posts.

Other conservatives and members of the Republican Party are, if not as vocal, keeping quiet on Power so far. Sen. James Risch (R-ID) had no comment on the nomination, according to his office. None of the four other Republicans on the committee ThinkProgress reached out to — including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) — responded to a request for comment on Power’s nomination. Even the office of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has been outspoken against both the interventionist policies Power has often promoted and the United Nations in general, did not put out an immediate statement on Power’s nomination. Likewise, Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office declined to make any sort of statement until Power reaches committee.

In introducing Power in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, President Obama called her a “relentless advocate for American interest and values.” Obama also highlighted Power’s role as the lead White House staffer on issues related to the U.N. in her previous role as the National Security Staff’s senior director for multilateral affairs. “She knows the U.N.’s strengths,” Obama said, “She knows its weaknesses. She knows American interests are advanced when we can rally the world to our side. And she knows that we have to stand up for the things that we believe in.”

Secretary of State John Kerry, who will be Power’s boss once she is at Turtle Bay, praised Power’s nomination in a statement, and singled out their shared affinity of the Boston Red Sox. Once Rice moves to the White House, and until Power is confirmed and in place, Deputy Permanent Representative Amb. Rosemary DiCarlo will serve as acting Permanent Representative, including most likely presiding over the U.N. Security Council when the U.S. takes over the rotating presidency in July.

Republicans are continuing to claim — without any evidence — U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice deliberately lied to the American people about the terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya last year, as President Obama appears set to name her as his new national security advisor.

The news of Rice’s promotion, and current NSA Tom Donilon’s departure from the White House, leaked early Wednesday morning, prompting members of the GOP to move fast to condemn the decision. At the heart of their condemnation is their on-going belief that Rice purposefully lied when she appeared on several Sunday morning news shows last September to explain the administration’s current knowledge about an attack on a diplomatic mission in Benghazi. Several of the points Rice made were later refuted, leading to the multitude of claims that she helped in the Obama administration’s alleged “cover-up.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has previously put forward his own interesting theories about what Benghazi was really about, slammed Rice on Fox News on Wednesday, questioning the President’s choice to “reappoint or promote basically the person who is guilty of misleading us over the Benghazi tragedy.” “How are they going to have the authority to have people believe what they’re saying when he is promoting someone who directly and deliberately misled the public over Benghazi?” Paul asked a sympathetic Fox host.

On the other side of Congress, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) also panned the choice to move Rice to the White House. “I am sure she is a nice person but she lacks judgment,” Chaffetz told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “She claims to have read the daily intelligence brief and anyone who was following what was happening in Libya would have known terrorism was likely a factor in the incident in Benghazi,” he said, before claiming that “she used her good name to try to convince the American people of this bogus story.”
Read more

The National Rifle Association is stoking the misguided fears of its members that the United Nations is coming to steal their guns through an international arms treaty in an attempt to raise funds needed to help block the treaty in the Senate.

In an email sent out on Wednesday to its supporters, the NRA ominously warned about the coming collusion between the United Nations and President Obama in the name of “trampling our Second Amendment freedoms.” The vehicle for this complete destruction of the Constitution? The recently passed United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which opens for signature on June 3. Despite the fact that only North Korea, Syria, and Iran voted against the treaty, the right-wing in the United States has long opposed what it sees as a chance for the government to legally steal Americans’ handguns.

The NRA email went to great lengths to solidify this fear in the minds of its supporters, repeatedly referring to the ATT as the “global gun ban treaty,” or variations thereof. “We need to send a clear message to every Senator that they have only two choices: Side with us and stop the U.N. gun ban treaty … or start looking for a new job at election time,” the message tells its readers. Despite the dark tidings, the ATT actually doesn’t affect the Second Amendment, something that even Texas’ extremely conservative attorney general begrudgingly admitted.

Instead, the treaty seeks to limit the sale of arms — including attack helicopters, tanks, and other larger arms, as well as small arms and ammunition for these weapons — to regimes that use them to violate human rights. To achieve this, the treaty requires states set up a system for tracking exports of arms to other countries and reporting those statistics to the United Nations annually. The U.S. government already tracks the sale of weapons overseas, meaning very little will change in practice for American citizens.

Undaunted by facts and unable to kill the treaty before it passed at the United Nations, despite its best efforts, the NRA now is attempting to shut down its passage in the Senate. As with all treaties, a two-thirds majority is required to ratify the ATT. “Your signed petition is the best tool we have against this attack on our gun rights and our national sovereignty,” the message declares, urging people to sign on to help “line the halls of the Senate with boxes and boxes of these petitions.”

The NRA is asking for “emergency contributions” from petition-signers. “This year, we’ve been forced to spend more than we’ve ever spent … because the attacks we’re facing have been bigger than anything we’ve ever faced before,” the email pleads, seeming to use the time-tested tactic of exploiting fear to raise money.

Unfortunately, the NRA’s messaging already seems to have permeated Washington, with prominent conservatives such as John Yoo and John Bolton penning op-eds unfairly condemning the treaty’s provisions. Senate Republicans are already lining up to condemn the treaty based on the same false pretenses as the NRA. Some members of the GOP are even warning that the treaty will lead to a Rwanda-like genocide. In spite of this opposition, the Obama administration has already made clear that it does intend to sign the treaty once it opens for signature.

Tensions within the Republican Party on foreign policy reemerged on Thursday with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) taking a broad shot at the vision of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and his allies.

At an event at the Center for New American Security (CNAS), McCain took several not so subtle swipes at Paul’s recent attempts to take on the GOP’s foreign policy orthodoxy and singled out the anti-drone filibuster Paul led in March as an example of Republicans yielding to political pressure to back something easy rather than asking tough questions about foreign policy:

McCAIN: Last month, most Republican senators joined a filibuster to protest the President’s policies on the use of armed drones. Rather than debating the very real issues associated with targeted killings, my colleagues chose to focus instead on the theoretical possibility that the President would use a drone to kill Americans on U.S. soil, even if they’re not engaged in hostilities. As misguided as this exercise was, the political pressures on Republicans were significant and many ultimately did — including many who know better.

While he did not name names, among the more senior Republicans who joined in the filibuster were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX). McCain in the immediate aftermath of the drones filibuster referred to Paul and co-filibuster leader Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) as “wacko birds,” a phrase he later apologized for using.

McCain admitted that the GOP needs to change its positions on counter-terrorism and other policies, listing several measures he would be putting forward in the coming weeks and months, including an update to the the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force, which his fellow Republicans are likely to embrace. Others, like revisions to U.S. foreign aid strategy towards Egypt and reining in Defense Department spending on costly and underperforming projects will likely earn him more enmity from various blocs within his party.

The Iraq War debacle and much of the Bush administration’s counter-terror policies led Americans to realize that Republicans were selling junk national security policy. Yet at the same time, the neocon stranglehold on the GOP remains alive and well (a sticking point Mitt Romney was faced with during last year’s presidential election).

Since the election, the Party’s soul-searching on foreign policy has broken into the public as struggles for the future of the party on foreign affairs have been frequent. Various sides have been loosely led by Paul, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and McCain and none seems ready to yield. And at present, it appears that the fight can only be overcome by adhering to a very slim set of neocon-esque foreign policy principles, or, as Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel discovered during his nomination battle, face accusations of apostasy and risk internal isolation.

So far, McCain is fine with having the debate, but appears to be wondering whether there is room for his views in the GOP. “Right now the far left and far right in America are coming together in favor of pulling us back from the world,” McCain warned at CNAS. “The President and I have had our differences, many of those differences will persist. But there are times these days when I feel I have more in common on foreign policy with President Obama than I do with some in my own party.”