The House of Representatives is likely to be the biggest hurdle that the resolution authorizing force in Syria will face, and it’s not looking good so far:
[W]hether or not the resolution winds up passing in the Senate, the real hurdle remains in the GOP-controlled House. And things on that front are looking progressively dimmer for the Obama administration.
Over the last two days, scores of members — most of them Republicans, but many of them Democrats — have expressed their opposition to the use of force in Syria.
According to The Fix’s handy-dandy whip count, the ranks of the opposition more than doubled from 34 on Tuesday morning to 83 by Wednesday night.
If you add up the confirmed and leaning “No’s” in the Post’s count, you get to 174 votes out of the 218 needed to block the resolution. By contrast, the confirmed and leaning “yes” votes currently add up to just 19 votes. That still leaves some 242 members who have not weighed in on the matter, of course. However, the trend right now clearly seems to be leaning against passage.
More from The Fix:
[I]t has become increasingly clear that a significant majority of House Republicans is likely to oppose the resolution. That means we are headed not just for questions about whether it would pass, but also about whether House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) — who supports the use of force — would bring it to a vote in violation of the so-called “Hastert Rule,” which requires a majority of the majority party to support a bill for it to be brought to a vote.
Given the strong demand for congressional input from both advocates and opponents of military action, it seems there’s at least a fair chance he will. Even if Boehner were to bring it to a vote, though, the minority Democrats would need to be pretty close to united, according to our current count. As of now, that’s not that case, with 22 Democrats expressing opposition and 24 more expressing skepticism.
The other possibility, of course, is that the resolution passes, but with a very slim majority. In that case, we’d be heading into action against Syria with a significant part of the Federal Government opposing the action. That’s not likely to help the President persuade other nations to join the effort.
