Iran deal quietly picks up some GOP backers
At last count, the number of congressional Republican supporting the international nuclear agreement with Iran is exactly zero. But away from Capitol Hill, it’s a very different story.
For example, former Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, used to be seen as one of the most influential voices in GOP politics on matters of international affairs. With that in mind, it matters that Lugar doesn’t want to see the Iran deal derailed, putting him sharply at odds with his former colleagues in Congress.
Brent Scowcroft, a veteran National Security Advisor to several Republican presidents, who also served as the chairman of George W. Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, has also expressed support for the deal.
And then there’s former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. As the Washington Post reported, he sounds a little annoyed by the inanity of his own party’s talking points, which he recognizes as wrong.
“It’s somewhere in between naive and unrealistic to assume that after we’ve, the United States of America, has negotiated something like this with the five other, you know, parties and with the whole world community watching, that we could back away from that – and that the others would go with us, or even that our allies would go with us,” Paulson said during a forum sponsored by the Aspen Institute on Thursday night to discuss his new book on China.
“And unilateral sanctions don’t work, okay?” Paulson continued. “They really have to be multilateral.”
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http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/iran-deal-quietly-picks-some-gop-backers?cid=eml_mra_20150817
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