Morning Bell: Let’s Not Make a Deal | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.

Morning Bell: Let’s Not Make a Deal | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.: "At the height of the debate over Obamacare, when the White House’s leftist allies were in full panic mode, The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein accused Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) of being “willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.” Lieberman’s crime? He opposed including an expansion of Medicare in the health regulation bill. Now that the President’s signature foreign policy achievement, the New START nuclear agreement with Russia, is on the ropes, the left is again back to their hyperbolic ways. Ploughshares Fund president Joseph Cirincione told The Associated Press last week: “A delayed ratification with a close vote would be a blow to U.S. leadership around the world. People would doubt the President’s ability to negotiate other agreements.”

The histrionics are the result of a sudden surge of concerns over the treaty that started with a blast from Mitt Romney who declared the treaty “Obama’s worst foreign policy mistake.” Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Carl Levin (D-MI) attempted to shoot down Romney’s concerns, but their responses raised more questions than they answered. Romney has responded to his critics by identifying eight problems with New START that must be resolved before the Senate can vote on the treaty. We’ll focus on three today:

New START Weakens Our Missile Defense Capabilities: The Washington Post editorial board asserted yesterday that “attempts by Moscow to insert [limits on missile defense] into the treaty failed.” This is just plain false. First, even the Post admits that the preamble links missile defense and offensive nuclear weapons. The Post says that this was also true of previous STARTs. But not only is the language in this preamble stronger, and not only has the Russian leadership said that any increase in our missile defense system would be considered a breach of the treaty, but Article V of the treaty specifically limits our ability to convert ICBM and submarine-launched ballistic missile launchers into defensive interceptors. The Post is completely silent about this fact.