Dems Prepare Votes on START Treaty

Politico reports:

Senate Democrats appear to have enough votes to overcome a Republican filibuster on the new START arms-control treaty, though it’s unclear if they will have the 67 votes needed for ratification.

At least four Republicans have committed to supporting the U.S.-Russia treaty or are leaning that way, including two who say they will vote for cloture. If Democrats can hold their 58-member caucus together, that would likely put them at or over the 60-vote threshold required to end debate on the treaty and move forward.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid?(D-Nev.) filed a cloture motion Sunday night that would set up a cloture vote Tuesday and a final vote for ratification Wednesday.

“As we move ahead, I look forward to continuing to debate amendments. But soon this will come down to a simple choice: you either want to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists, or you don’t,” Reid said.

Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has been urging START ratification in the lame-duck session, is expected to vote for cloture. So will Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).

“I’ve said that I’ve supported START and a vote for cloture to proceed to the consideration of it, because I do think it is critical to always engage in reducing our respective arsenals,” Snowe told reporters Sunday at the Capitol. “Wherever we can engage in that with Russia, it is absolutely essential that we do so.”

But she said it’s crucial that her GOP colleagues have the ability to offer amendments. “If we work this process through, we may come to an ultimate conclusion,” Snowe said.

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GOP Leaders Prepare to Stop Palin

Politico reports:

Top Republicans in Washington and in the national GOP establishment say the 2010 campaign highlighted an urgent task that they will begin in earnest as soon as the elections are over: Stop Sarah Palin.

Interviews with advisers to the main 2012 presidential contenders and with other veteran Republican operatives make clear they see themselves on a common, if uncoordinated, mission of halting the momentum and credibility Palin gained with conservative activists by plunging so aggressively into this year’s midterm campaigns.

There is rising expectation among GOP elites that Palin will probably run for president in 2012 and could win the Republican nomination, a prospect many of them regard as a disaster in waiting.

Many of these establishment figures argue in not-for-attribution comments that Palin’s nomination would ensure President Barack Obama’s reelection, as the deficiencies that marked her 2008 debut as a vice presidential nominee — an intensely polarizing political style and often halting and superficial answers when pressed on policy — have shown little sign of abating in the past two years.

“There is a determined, focused establishment effort … to find a candidate we can coalesce around who can beat Sarah Palin,” said one prominent and longtime Washington Republican. “We believe she could get the nomination, but Barack Obama would crush her.”

This sentiment was a nearly constant refrain in POLITICO interviews with top advisers to the candidates most frequently mentioned as running in 2012 and a diverse assortment of other top GOP officials.

Nearly all of these interviewees insisted on keeping their views on background, fearing the wrath of conservative grass-roots activists who are enthralled with the former Alaska governor and who have made plain that the establishment’s disdain for Palin and her devotees is mutually reciprocated.

Top Republicans, from presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty to highly influential advisers such as Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, are said to be concerned she will run, and could win, according to the officials.

A Palin adviser declined to comment.

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