Democrats and their media allies are hitting back hard over the letter (text here) sent by 47 GOP senators to Iran, reminding the mullahs that any deal that is not ratified by the Senate could be reversed by the next president.  From the White House Briefing Room, Josh Earnest resorted to the n-word (neocons), claiming that the nefarious heirs of Bush are “using a masked ‘civics lesson’ to push for a ‘military option’ instead of negotiations.”

“Sen. Cotton has referred to his strategy to undermine this deal as an effort to prevent a diplomatic agreement,” adding, “so it is clear what their strategy is. If they want to mask it as part of a sort of civics lesson they want to share with Iranian political leadership, they are welcome to do that.”

He concluded, “The only option to these sort of diplomatic, to a diplomatic agreement, that any body else  has raised  is a military option and again, we have seen Republicans time again try to advance the military option ahead of a diplomatic option and the president doesn’t think that’s a good policy. He certainly doesn’t think it’s good strategy, and the truth is, the efforts of neocons in the previous administration to do that frankly hurt the country’s standing around the world.”

President Obama all but accused the senators of being in league with apocalypse-lovers of Tehran:

“I think it’s somewhat ironic to see some members of Congress wanting to make common cause with the hard-liners in Iran,” President Obama said a few hours after the letter was made public. “It’s an unusual coalition.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont was even less subtle, accusing the GOP of lusting for war:

It appears that for most of my Republican colleagues in the Senate, a war in Afghanistan and a war in Iraq were not enough. They now apparently want a war in Iran as well. President Obama is working with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China to try to negotiate a peaceful means to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. These negotiations must be allowed to continue and, hopefully, will succeed. It is an outrage that my Republican colleagues are trying to sabotage that effort.

But it fell to the New York Daily News to go nuclear and roll out the t-word:

All this over a the Senate asserting its constitutional role in ratifying treaties.  The fact is that Iran remains publicly committed to wiping Israel off the map and then taking on the Great Satan (us) in an apocalypse, ushering in the return of the Mahdi.  Thus, any deal with them that fails to stop their acquisition of a nuclear arsenal is of the gravest concern, and requires ratification by the Senate.

If the deal under negotiation fails to provide a convincing stop to the program, it should not have any effect.  Yet Obama echoed Nancy Pelosi’s famous assertion that we have to pass Obamacare to see what’s in it, applied to his deal:

I think what we’re going to focus on right now is actually seeing whether we can get a deal or not.  And once we do – if we do – then we’ll be able to make the case to the American people, and I'm confident we’ll be able to implement it.

Reminding the mullahs that the president does not have unilateral power to bind America beyond his term in office is a necessary civics lesson.

Hat tip: Lauri Regan