Hey wait, when Bush was President didn’t people like Cynthia Tucker tell us over and over again that dissent was the highest form of patriotism?…

Republicans’ unpatriotic resistance to New START — Cynthia Tucker/AJC

There is simply no modern precedent for the behavior of Republicans in the U.S. Senate. They are not only hyper-partisan, but they are also petty, petulant and unpatriotic, willing to jeopardize national security if they think they can hurt President Obama. Witness their growing resistance to a nuclear pact with Russia, the New START treaty.

The pact represents minimilist, mainstream downsizing of the nuclear weapons arsenals of the United States and Russia, a continuation of policies first envisioned by none other than Ronald Reagan.

New START has been endorsed by every living secretary of state. That includes, obviously, Condoleezza Rice. George H.W. Bush has endorsed it.

But Republicans continue to come up with excuses, including an insistence that Obama is trying to “jam” the treaty through a lame duck session without giving them enough time to consider it. The treaty was signed by the U.S. and Russia in April; they’ve had months to read it.

Some Republicans, such as Jon Kyl of Arizona, claim the Obama administration hasn’t set aside enough money to modernize our remaining nuclear weapons. That, too, is nonsense, according to Linton Brooks, who ran the National Nuclear Security Administration under George W. Bush.