Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a top GOP negotiator in the Senate, today blasted the Senate's decision to fast-track a financial reform bill out of the banking committee with no negotiations over amendments and with no Republican votes. In remarks at the US Chamber of Commerce today, Corker called the tactic to pass a "very, very partisan bill" by a party-line vote in banking committee a "dysfunctional" move, and said the committee "missed a tremendous opportunity on financial reform." "We had an opportunity this Monday to pass a bill out of our committee in a bipartisan way," Corker said, "and then stand on the Senate floor and hold hands" and begin negotiating together to craft a bipartisan bill.

By choosing to bypass committee negotiations, Senate Democrats have set the stage for a bitter partisan battle on the Senate floor, Corker said, a showdown that's far less likely to produce a bill on which both parties can agree. "It is going to be far more difficult since we missed an opportunity coming into committee to have bipartisan bill," the Tennessee senator said. "It's going to be far more difficult to have a regulatory bill that seeks the middle ground and stands the test of time." Corker lamented that now that the Senate's talks on financial reform were beyond the committee, the talks would likely take place "in a back room someplace." "I think a very strategic mistake has been made," he said. "

He also criticized the Obama administration, calling it "out of balance" for advocating for an independent consumer protection agency. In previous negotiations, Corker has supported enhanced consumer protection but housing it within, say, the Federal Reserve and weaving consumer protection into more traditional bank regulation powers. Overall, Corker said the bill had become a much more liberal bill, and that it will be an uphill struggle to change that. "Now, we've moved way to the left," he said, "and it's going to be difficult to hold people together to get it back in the middle of the road."

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Considering the Obama administration's ever wobblier attempt to impose "crippling sanctions" on Iran, the New York Times' David Sanger recently wrote, "The delays and the potential for a substantially watered-down resolution, Mr. Obama's allies say, have put the administration's credibility on the line in one of its biggest foreign policy challenges."

Credibility.  Washington policymakers have been in search of it, have even fought wars in its name, for half a century now. In the Vietnam era, realizing that our victory weapons, nuclear bombs, were essentially too powerful to use, American strategic thinkers sought others ways to project, if not power commensurate with our arsenal, then an image of power commensurate with it—"an image of vast national strength and of unwavering determination to use that strength in world affairs," as Jonathan Schell explained in his remarkable book from that era, Time of Illusion. Unfortunately, when you put your faith in "credibility," you also offer power to others in whose eyes you must, of course, be credible.

By that standard, in the age of Obama, the United States has reached a curious moment of rising incredibility on the global stage. Indeed, nothing illustrated this onrushing state more vividly than the whack the Israelis recently gave Vice President Joe Biden—and so the global image of American power. While Biden was in Israel paying homage to that country and trying to jumpstart the "peace process," Israel announced a new building program in East Jerusalem. The news wasn't in itself particularly startling—such building in occupied lands, after all, has been a non-stop reality of Israeli policy for years. New was the stunning timing of the announcement, the way the leadership of a country remarkably dependent on American power and money evidently had no hesitation in administering a humiliating credibility-drubbing to Mr. Number Two.

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David Corn and Pat Buchanan appeared on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews to discuss the Republican response, including the racist and anti-gay remarks hurled at Democratic lawmakers, to the Democrats' passage of historic health insurance reforms.

David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter.

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A top lawyer with the US Chamber of Commerce, the right-wing lobbying behemoth fighting climate change legislation and tough financial reforms, is now spearheading a deep-pocketed GOP group for this fall's election. Former Chamber counsel Steven J. Law has become the head of a conservative 527 political organization dubbed American Crossroads, National Journal reported today. The up-and-coming group, the Journal's Peter Stone reported, "hopes to raise some $60 million to help dozens of congressional Republican incumbents and candidates in this year's elections," an effort surely made easier by having a former top Chamber official at the helm:

Law, who has been at the chamber for about two years, will be leading a group that seems poised to play a big role this fall, according to two sources familiar with the new 527. It recently raked in millions of dollars with the help of ex-RNC chairman Ed Gillespie and one source says it has received pledges for $40 million. Gillespie recently made fund raising stops in Texas and New York City to help American Crossroads get off the ground, although he has told National Journal that he doesn't intend to be formally affiliated with it.

Law is a former chief of staff to Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., served as executive director at the National Republican Senatorial Committee under McConnell and was a deputy secretary at the Department of Labor during the George W. Bush administration. Law is known as a tough advocate and is respected for his fund raising prowess. He's bagged big money for the chamber's campaign to defeat "card check" legislation, a top priority of labor unions that, if enacted, would expand their ability to organize.

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