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Desperately seeking angry white females
Hate groups move beyond their traditional "angry white male" constituency to recruit as many new female members as they can find.
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[10/14/99]

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[10/14/99]

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By Jake Tapper
[10/13/99]

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[10/13/99]

Pakistani purge
The coup in Pakistan seems to have wide popular support -- with the proviso that military rule should be temporary.
By Muddasir Rizvi
[10/13/99]

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But President Bill Clinton and treaty supporters did little to sway lawmakers in the opposition camp, and embattled Senate Republicans cast ballots mostly down party lines Wednesday to reject ratification of the treaty. It was a stunning rebuke to the president's foreign policy and also marked the first time the Senate had rejected an arms control treaty since refusing to approve the Treaty of Versailles in 1920.

Experts discussed the political consequences of the treaty vote with Salon News.

Rich Galen is a Republican strategist and publisher of Mullings, an Internet political column.

The Senate leadership's position was that the president hadn't exactly beaten anybody over the head with this treaty. He never said "we need to get this done now." The Republicans were talking to the guys they trust on this issue, like James Schlesinger, who said that it was a bad treaty. Clinton was going around saying that nobody in America opposed this treaty except for 50 Republicans in the Senate. Lott got wind of this plot to attempt to embarrass the Republicans and said, "there's no need to do that. We'll just bring it up for a vote." There wasn't any urgency to this vote. It didn't need to happen now. Clinton threw down the gauntlet on this one and said, "I bet you can't beat me on this one," and Trent Lott said, "Watch me."

For the Republicans running for reelection in the Senate, there should be no problem from this vote. They have better information than the press does, so if they go home and get a Democrat opponent who says "you were against this treaty," they'll be able to give their voters good reasons.

It does mean that Al Gore has something to talk about on foreign policy that's not Bosnia, Haiti or Somalia. But for Bill Clinton to stand there at his press conference this afternoon and say "I didn't know they were going to bring it to the floor, so I couldn't get prepared for it" is so hypocritical.

Clinton did use the term "new isolationism" to talk about the Republicans who voted against it, which in my mind is an implication of creeping Buchananism among the Republicans. That is a phrase they must have tested with focus groups and found that works for them. What I don't understand is how accusing the Republicans of the kind of isolationism that the labor unions -- who just endorsed Gore -- is going to help. I think the congressional Democrats are saying they'll keep fighting for this thing because that's what the president is saying.

The real question is how do you undo a bad treaty. The answer is you don't, unless there is specific language in the treaty that lets you out. The only answer would be to violate the treaty.

No one really wanted to take this vote in the first place.

Next page | People underestimate the Senate's isolationism