When It’s 9-9, Who Wins?

Steve Clemons seems fairly confident that the surprise 9-9 committee vote is going to create more problems for John Bolton: Bolton won’t get a vote before Memorial Day recess. This marathon has a long way to go, and I’ve been training. This is all looking quite good. On the other hand, Fred Kaplan at Slate ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

Steve Clemons seems fairly confident that the surprise 9-9 committee vote is going to create more problems for John Bolton:

Steve Clemons seems fairly confident that the surprise 9-9 committee vote is going to create more problems for John Bolton:

Bolton won’t get a vote before Memorial Day recess. This marathon has a long way to go, and I’ve been training. This is all looking quite good.

On the other hand, Fred Kaplan at Slate sees Lincoln Chafee’s vote for Bolton as the more telling indicator, and doesn’t see a rush of Republican defections on the Senate floor:

And so, John Bolton lives another day?battered, bruised, and crippled, but it doesn’t matter because all he needed to do was to survive today, and, now that he’s done that, he’ll almost certainly be confirmed as the next U.N. ambassador.

I tend to think Kaplan’s right. The UN-needs-a-bully argument has not carried the day, even if its adherents can’t be disabused of it. But loyalty to Bush, on a fight on which he’s staked a lot, still goes a long way. And if the stop-Bolton movement can’t get Chafee, how are they going to get a Senate majority?

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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