WASHINGTON -- Sen. Jim DeMint's threat -- later retracted -- to stall the ratification process by literally reading aloud the entire nuclear treaty known as New START has thrust his role in the chamber into the political spotlight once again and spurred a new round of rebukes from Democrats.
The South Carolina Republican has fully embraced his role as a thorn in the administration's legislative agenda. And his office makes no bones about the fact that his gambit, with respect to START, was a means of effectively squashing the treaty -- at least in the current lame duck session.
"Sen. DeMint opposes passage of the START treaty because it could seriously weaken our missile defense capabilities that protect Americans and our allies around the world," spokesman Wesley Denton said. "And he has made it very clear he would vigorously oppose any attempt by Sen. Reid to make the unprecedented move to try to ram a major arms treaty like this through in a lame duck session."
What's made this round of DeMint-styled obstructionism different than others is the vitriol it has engendered and the sense, among White House and senior Democratic officials, that it can work to their advantage. Minutes after the senator's threat to read the treaty in full was announced, Obama administration officials were hard at work, working the press.
"This is a new low in putting political stunts ahead of our national security, and it is exactly the kind of Washington game-playing that the American people are sick of," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said. "While some express concern that the Senate doesn't have time to debate the treaty, Senator DeMint wants to waste 12 hours to read the text of a treaty that has been available to every member of the Senate and the public for more than eight months."
Other administration officials insisted to those who would listen that not only was DeMint's ploy dangerous, it was completely unserious. An aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, noted that the senator had actually been absent from seven of the 12 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings that had been held on New START, including one that was, as an aide said, "top secret/closed." Their point: if DeMint didn't think enough was known about the content of the treaty, it was his own fault.
DeMint's office declined to comment on the accuracy of those figures. Instead, an aide sent over a Nov. 15 letter signed by 10 Republican senators-elect urging Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) not to push New START until they have been seated, as well as a Heritage Foundation report noting that "no major treaty has ever been ratified by the Senate during a lame duck session of Congress."
A Democratic aide on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told The Huffington Post that the administration's numbers were accurate. A transcript of the nine days of the New START hearing, available as a 448-page PDF file -- some days had double hearings -- shows limited participation by DeMint.
There were only four instances in which the senator had a back-and-forth with witnesses testifying on the treaty. In addition, DeMint submitted four questions in writing to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, four questions in writing to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, and five questions in writing to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. In each instance, it appeared, DeMint's position on the measure was clear -- he didn't back it -- and his thirst for additional details was insatiable.
"I just want to ask Secretary Clinton, will you allow members of the committee to see the full negotiating record?" he asked in a hearing on May 18, 2010.
"Well, first, senator, let me say that the language you're referring to -- similar language was included in the START treaty," Clinton replied. "And, you know, I hope we will be able to persuade you, by the end of this process, and we will certainly make every effort to do so, that nothing in any previous treaty, nor any unilateral statement or any preamble to a treaty, has in any way constrained our development of missile defense up to this date, and nothing in the current new treaty does, either."
Democrats view DeMint's hand-wringing as the symptom, not the core problem. The senator, after all, has pledged to obstruct before, most famously preaching to fellow conservatives that health care reform should be made Obama's "Waterloo."
And in an earlier, seemingly-prescient panel on filibuster reform Wednesday morning, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) left little room for interpretation as to his views of his South Carolina colleague.
"We have more than one, several senators whose stated goal is to stop everything," said the Iowa Democrat. "They are not interested in working, even within their own party, to advance things. They just simply want to stop it. To wit, my friend Jim DeMint's statement, a few months ago, that his main goal in the next congress is total gridlock. Total gridlock. How do you deal, I ask you, in the 21st century, with all the problems confronting us internationally, national security, health, education, all of the things we need to do, how do you do that when you have these archaic rules of the filibuster and then you have these few senators who don't want to do anything. I mean, they simply want to stop everything."