Republican Dominoes Falling on Nuclear Treaty

As Josh Rogin writes in Foreign Policy this morning:

Everyone here on Capitol Hill is beginning to see the ratification of New START as increasingly inevitable….

On Monday, Senator Brown (R-MA) walked out of a closed-door session on the Hill and told reporters he was going to vote for the New START Treaty. He was quoted in the Boston Globe:

I’ve done my due diligence, and I’m going to be … ultimately supporting the START treaty…. I believe it’s something that’s important for our country, and I believe that it’s a good move forward to deal with our national security issues.

Brown was the first domino to tip, knocking over one after another in a long line, leaving us with 10 Republican Yes votes as of this morning!

This morning Alexander (R-TN) announced he would vote yes, and then it was Sen. Voinovich (R-OH). After that, Corker (R-TN) and Bennett (R-UT) were asked by reporters in the hallways of the Senate if they would vote to ratify and they said Yes.

Then, minutes ago, Sen. Isakson (R-GA) released a statement announcing that he will vote Yes to ratify. And then Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) told her home state press that she was a Yes vote as well. Adding those to Lugar (R-IN), Snowe (R-ME) and Collins (R-ME), who announced support earlier, that makes 10!

This is exactly why we have been working all year to peel off the Republicans we thought were most likely to be reasonable: to initiate the domino effect that would get us above the 9 votes we needed to win.

NBC is reporting this morning that the treaty has the votes we need to ratify. There are still a few Republicans we are hopeful we will get, and end up with a strong bipartisan vote on this first arms control treaty in decades.