Obama on Verge of Historic Rebuke Over Syria

 

The biggest losers in the battle, Towery says, may be House Leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor, because they have voiced support for the measure.

"I don't think this will be a history-making failure on Obama's part, because I think his presidency is basically at a point where it is viewed as ineffective and pretty much at its end anyway. This may be the bow at the top of the package marking the ineffectiveness in the second term. But I don’t think this will be a new emblem of failure. I mean, we’re already there," Towery said.

But he added: "It would be very difficult for Boehner and Cantor to be re-elected to leadership of the House, with this sort of revolt on their hands."

He also called the division within the GOP between the leadership and the base "a harbinger of things to come."

"A Republican Party that is barely holding itself together at the seams in my opinion is splitting itself apart," Towery said. "In my opinion, that’s almost as big a story as a president who in his second term is proving to be almost completely ineffective."

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President Barack Obama appears to be dangerously close to what would be an historic rebuke at the hands of Congress, if the current whip-count projections on the authorization to attack Syria continue to hold.

Pundits on both sides of the aisle say losing the high-stakes bid for congressional authorization would make Obama an instant lame-duck, and might well endanger his entire second-term agenda.

The resolution authorizing an attack on Syrian strongman Bashar Assad, as punishment for his use of chemical weapons against his own people, is still expected to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate.

But the real question mark all along has been whether the administration could muster enough support to get the attack resolution through the House. And there, the situation for the administration appears to be growing dimmer by the hour.

Various news organizations are contacting members of Congress to see where they stand on the attack authorization. While each outlet has different numbers, the ominous sign for the administration is that all of them show the "no" votes outpacing the "yes" votes by a more than a 3-1 margin.

Most alarming for the administration may be The Washington Post whip count.

The Post has contacted 371 of the 435 members of the House. Of those contacted, 204 representatives are against authorization or leaning against it. That compares to 24 members in favor and 143 members who are undecided, and 48 of the undecided representatives are Republicans.  

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