THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The Senate voted on the repeal of the infamous AUMF which up to now has been used to justify unlimited warfare and military involvement anywhere the executive chooses around the globe. The vote fell pretty much along party lines with some exceptions.

The debate pitted the Republican Party’s ascendant isolationist wing, represented by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, against its old-line interventionists, led by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who is pressing his vision of a muscular military even as he battles brain cancer.

Mr. Paul pressed for the repeal vote, in a strange bedfellows alliance with Senator Tim Kaine, the Virginia Democrat who was his party’s vice-presidential nominee last year. But the effort failed when senators voted 61 to 36 to set the measure aside, rather than include it in the annual defense policy bill that senators are considering this week.

“What we have today is basically unlimited war — war anywhere, anytime, any place on the globe,” Mr. Paul told his colleagues in a speech Tuesday afternoon on the Senate floor. “I don’t think anyone with an ounce of intellectual honesty believes these authorizations allow current wars we fight in seven countries.”

Mr. Paul had proposed repealing the declaration in six months, to give lawmakers time to consider a new one. The issue has been around since 2015, when President Barack Obama asked Congress to replace the authorization of military force passed to battle Al Qaeda with a new one crafted specifically to take on the Islamic State.

But so far Congress has balked, declining to take on the difficult issue even as lawmakers such as Mr. Kaine insist that the legislative branch should reclaim its constitutional duty to declare war.

In the House, in another unlikely partnership, Representative Barbara Lee, the California Democrat who was the only member of the House to vote against the original resolution in 2001, paired up with Representative Scott Taylor, a freshman Virginia Republican and former Navy SEAL, over the summer to convince the Appropriations Committee to insert language repealing the original use of force declaration into a spending bill.

“I just felt compelled to stand up and say, now it’s time to look at the AUMF,” Mr. Taylor said, using the acronym for the authorization for the use of military force. He said once he spoke up, other Republicans joined in to support him: “It’s an issue that I don’t think is going to go away.”

But Republican leaders stripped the provision out of the spending measure; Speaker Paul D. Ryan said at the time that the move was a “mistake” and that such language was not appropriate for inclusion in a spending measure.

“It was really shameful,” Ms. Lee said in an interview. “The Constitution requires us to do our job and debate the costs of war.”

With the Republicans in charge, there is little chance the Congress will do its job. What is certain is that until a major change occurs, the President, whoever he or she may be, will continue to have an open ended ability to start wars at his pleasure.