Newspaper editorial pages around the country have not been kind to Senate Republicans this week.
A collective “Seriously?” has emerged in reaction to the open letter that 47 Republican senators penned to the Iranian leadership, which seemed designed to undercut its nuclear talks with the Obama administration.
From New England to the Great Plains, from the Gulf Coast to the West Coast, editorial boards thundered and chided.
“A blot on the 114th U.S. Senate,” opined the Detroit Free Press.
“The senators who signed the letter should be ashamed,” said the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Some sounded embarrassed.
“Cringe-worthy buffoonery on the global stage,” sighed The Salt Lake Tribune.
Others just seemed weary of Capitol Hill’s continuing dysfunction.
“Has Congress gone crazy?” wondered The Courier-Journal in Louisville.
The Republican senators who signed the letter – seven did not ‑ don’t like the direction of the negotiations with Iran about limiting its nuclear development. In the manner of a middle school civics lesson, they suggested that no matter what happens with the talks between the U.S., its western allies and Tehran, the Senate could eventually undo whatever agreement might be reached.
Their intrusion into the negotiations has drawn the ire of President Obama and congressional Democrats, and sparked dismay among diplomatic and foreign policy experts.
Some of the newspaper rebukes got personal, in so far as they lectured home state Republican senators whose names appeared on the letter.
It did not play well, for instance, in Peoria.
Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, “has not been among the crazies in Congress, particularly on foreign policy matters. But he joined them here,” wrote the Peoria Journal Star. “Anytime he finds himself in agreement with (Texas Republican Sen.) Ted Cruz, he ought to reconsider.”
Noting her signature endorsing the letter, the Concord Monitor said of Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, “It’s not every day that a United States senator attempts to undermine U.S. foreign policy and weaken the nation in one cursive swoop.”
In Phoenix, The Arizona Republic editorial board concluded that Republican senators “are effectively declaring a congressional right to conduct subversive, foreign-policy proxy wars with the president, with threats to blow up agreement negotiations as their weapon of choice.”
Then it scolded home state Republican Sen. John McCain, who almost became president himself when he was his party’s nominee in 2008 and lost to Obama:
“McCain of all people should know better.”