The Trail

Thursday, November 1, 2007

THE LAW OF THE SEA

Almost Swimming in Support

It is that rare animal in Washington these days: a treaty that draws equal measures of support from Republicans and Democrats, from the White House and Congress, from environmentalists and business groups.

The Law of the Sea Treaty, which passed a key Senate committee today, would establish new, international rules for use of the world's oceans.

Republican Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.) has called it a "vital international agreement." Business organizations want the treaty as a guarantee of passage through northern oceans as the ice there melts. Ocean Conservancy President Vikki Spruill said the law had earned the nickname "constitution for the oceans" because it "imposes basic obligations for all countries to protect and preserve the marine environment. President Bush said in May: "I urge the Senate to act favorably on U.S. accession to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea during this session of Congress."

But to listen to Republican presidential candidates, the Law of the Sea treaty -- shortened to LOST -- will establish a scary, unaccountable, shady international government bureaucracy that will strip Americans of their freedoms.

It is, in short, this year's New World Order whipping boy for the right.

"Are we in favor of increasing the power and authority of the United Nations and its subsidiaries at the expense of American sovereignty and vital interests?" former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee asked in a recent statement. "Or are we opposed to world government, particularly the one envisioned by LOST, charged with implementing a hopelessly outdated and counterproductive socialist and redistributionist agenda from the 1970s?"

No soft-pedaling there.

His rivals are equally anti-LOST. Former senator Fred Thompson (Tenn.) said the treaty gives "far too much authority" to the United Nations. A spokesman for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said he opposes the empowering of "unaccountable international institutions."

And former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani called the treaty "fundamentally flawed" and said he can't support "the creation of yet another unaccountable international bureaucracy."

The position of the GOP candidates puts them squarely in the camp of conservative activists, especially online, who have spent years warning of a conspiracy to enact the global treaty.

In a recent online column, conservative commentator Phyllis Schlafly urged against ratifying "any more U.N. treaties that put U.S. law in the noose of foreign tribunals."

-- Michael D. Shear

THE FUTURE FOR DEMOCRATS?

It Might Be Single Women

Democratic consultants and activists have seen the future, and the future is single women. At least when it comes to the base vote for the 2008 presidential race.

In a lunch briefing yesterday hosted by the Center for American Progress, experts including pollster Stan Greenberg and Page Gardner, president of Women's Voices, Women Vote Action Fund argued that unmarried women rank as one of the Democratic Party's most reliable and important support groups.

With the number of unmarried, separated, divorced and widowed American women is equal to the number of married women, Gardner said, single women represent 26 percent of the eligible voting population and make up "the fastest-growing large demographic group in the country."

However, unlike Carrie Bradshaw and her friends on the now-defunct series "Sex and the City," these single women are more focused on issues such as ending the war in Iraq and better health-care access, according to Gardner: "These women are worried about paying the rent, not marrying Mr. Big."

Greenberg said this demographic amounts to "the Democrats' evangelicals," in part because evangelicals make up 23 percent of the eligible vote and are just as reliable in their support for the opposite party, the GOP.

"What happens to these two groups is going to be quite critical in this election," Greenberg said, noting that two-thirds of single women backed the Democrats in 2006.

-- Juliet Eilperin