Schultz: Congress Has To Decide If They Want To Vote With Obama Or Against Their Constituents

ED SCHULTZ: The president is making the case to Congress and the American people for a strike, but no one, including me, is buying it. And I don’t think the American people are buying it. The most recent poll shows 59% of aware Americans are opposed to a strike while only 36% are in favor of a strike. Is that a number that the president can overcome? Maybe. The mood is similar in Congress with 199 members opposing or likely opposing a strike, but you have to say that the momentum is with the no votes right now.

You know, Congress is siding with the American people, and now the president is asking members of Congress to vote against the will of the people? That’s what it’s going to come down to if these poll numbers state same. The president is asking congress to take a leap of faith, it’s a ‘trust me’ moment. ‘I’ve been elected, I’ve been re-elected. I got bin Laden. I didn’t put troops on the ground in Egypt or in Libya, there were regime changes there. Freedom is on the march. We’re not attacking anybody. We’ve wound down in Afghanistan and we’re out of Iraq and we’re not spending billions on war anymore.’

The guy can make the case to the members of Congress and if you trust me on this, we’re going to be okay. This is the right thing to do. This is what the phone calls are going to sound like this weekend. Members of Congress are going to have to decide if they want to go with the president or if they want to go with their constituents. And make no mistake, now, the president is not in uncharted territory here. This isn’t something that has never happened before. Make no mistake, going against the people, if you’re a member of Congress, that body that you’re elected to, yes, you have gone against the people a number of times on a number of votes.

Earlier this year. 91% of the American people supported expanded background checks for gun purchases. Congress voted the measure down. 2011, 63% of Americans supported President Obama’s American Jobs Act. Everybody’s for jobs, right? The Congress wasn’t, they voted it down. 74% of Americans said that they wanted to end subsidies for Big Oil, eliminate all these subsidies going to the richest corporations of the world. Congress trashed The Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act.

So it’s not like the president is going to be picking up the phone saying, ‘You know what? I really need you to do something that you’ve never done before. You need to go against your constituents. You need to trust me.’ Well, you know, as we have documented on this show, Republicans have obstructed our nation’s first black president on everything. Republicans are voting against Syria not because they are morally opposed to war. Heck, they love war. They love confrontation. They love the war machine that they keep feeding and the manufacturing of it all.

They are voting against military action in Syria because they despise this is man and they do not want to give him any type of foreign policy credibility. Because you see, over the years the Republicans, they have always been the ones to be the experts on foreign policy and all the Democrats know how to do is be a bunch of doves. This guy is scoring high in the foreign policy world. Regardless of all of this, the debate in Congress for military action starts next week. I mean, if you love war and politics, this is your Super Bowl pre-game. It’s going to get hot. i think we need one of those good old fashioned hot debates on both floors of the House and the Senate. And we deserve it.

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Schultz: Congress Has To Decide If They Want To Vote With Obama Or Against Their Constituents