vote is the ongoing brawl inside the republican coalition over that party s foreign policy direction. and when watching the news today, each new position for or against the resolution from both democrats and republicans often came as a genuine surprise. citizens looking to their political leaders for direction are likely to find themselves profoundly contorted. joining me now is tommy vietor, former national security spokesman in the obama administration, co-founder of fenway strategies. he was back in the white house today to help the president win support for intervention in syria. ben dominic, at think tank the heartland institute. he co-founded red state a conservative blog. eli lake, senior national security reporter from newsweek and the daily beast. explain this to me. i found the moment in the hearing today that was most interesting was several senators saying, if you think you have the authority to do this without coming to congress, why are you coming to congress? and i
today he would back the president on a congressional vote to authorize a strike against syria. so did congressman elliot engel, top democrat on the house foreign affairs committee who said if we didn t respond in kind, it would send a message to every despot, every thug you could commit war crimes and nothing is going happen. nancy pelosi made a similar pro-interventionist argument, herself. from the humanitarian standpoint cannot be ignored or else we cannot say never again. secondly, from a national security standpoint, we have to send a very clear message to those who have weapons of mass destruction, of any variety, that should forget about using them.
at the event, featuring test testimonial from kentucky women. a tweet this quote in mcconnell press packet on co-sponsorship is interesting. the quote comes from angela lee which says mitch is the co-sponsor of the original violence again women act. the truth is, mcconnell did co-sponsor a version 20 years ago. that legislation died in committee and never got a vote. by the time the measure came up again in 1993, for real this time, mcconnell was no longer a co-sponsor and, in fact, voted against final passage of the bill. of course, mcconnell has had two decades to redeem himself on that no vote. yet earlier this very year, he voted against the legislation s reauthorization even though he knew it would pass by a wide bipartisan margin. aides say mcconnell voted for a, quote, stronger alternative to
what we re seeing this week is a sharper bifurcation within both political parties. house speaker john boehner said today he would back the president on a congressional vote to authorize a strike against syria. so did congressman elliot engel, top democrat on the house foreign affairs committee who said if we didn t respond in kind, it would send a message to every despot, every thug you could commit war crimes and nothing is going happen. nancy pelosi made a similar pro-interventionist argument, herself. from the humanitarian standpoint cannot be ignored or else we cannot say never again. secondly, from a national security standpoint, we have to send a very clear message to those who have weapons of mass destruction, of any variety, that should forget about using them. on the anti-interventionist side, many members of congressional progressive caucus including the liberal congressman from florida, alan grayson, who launched a position against attacking seyria and
very quickly to you, eli. do you think this is a turning point in the internal politics of foreign policy in the republican party? because i think the majority of republicans are going to go vote against this. and it seems to me that the rand pauls, this will be the moment in which the rand pauls of the party finally sort of can declare victory for their foreign policy vision being the dominant one. they will have a great moment until there s another republican president and it will go back to an expansive executive ding, ding, ding, ding, isn t that true? i think eli is right, unfortunately. right. i think that there s obviously there s a tremendous amount of you have to feel bad in some ways for obama. i mean, like, here s a guy who killed gadhafi and osama bin laden and people are saying he s a wimp. right. who else do i have to kill. let me say this as a