Strange Bedfellows Are Blocking The McConnell-Obama Trade Deal (TPP) [View all]

[RiverLover]

(The title could easily be "Strange Bedfellows Are Pushing For The TPP" imo...)

Strange Bedfellows Are Blocking The McConnell-Obama Trade Deal
12/3/14

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been dreaming about cutting major deals as Senate majority leader for most of his career. Next year, he'll finally get the chance to do it with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the most ambitious free trade agreement since the Clinton era. The only thing standing in his way is his own political party.

President Barack Obama's administration has been negotiating the TPP since the beginning of his presidency. Twelve nations are now involved in the talks, which have major implications for the U.S. economy, public health and foreign policy. But Obama has faced two domestic obstacles to enacting his pact: Democrats in Congress, who worry it will exacerbate income inequality, and a bloc of House Republicans, who are up in arms about the deal's implications for executive power and national sovereignty.

The administration conducts the talks in secret, so the public only knows about terms of the deal through leaked documents. But opposition from conservative hardliners has intensified since GOP gains in the midterm elections, even as McConnell has pledged to cut a deal with Obama on TPP as one of his first orders of business next year.

"I think it's insane to give Obama some power to negotiate an important treaty in secret without any supervision, not have to account to Congress or the Senate," Phyllis Schlafly, a prominent social conservative best known for opposing the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, told HuffPost last week. "It just blows my mind why Republicans would be willing to do that. We've been yapping for months about his executive actions and his executive amnesty and taking unconstitutional positions."

The internal GOP feud over what some conservative critics are calling "Obamatrade" is just the latest in a series of skirmishes between the party's corporate-friendly leadership and its populist base....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/03/mitch-mcconnell-tpp-tea-party_n_6182126.html

The fight of populists vs corporatists?