Forget Hillary, Jim DeMint is the "winner" of the crisis racking Honduran democracy.  The South Carolina Republican senator, who had held key State Department nominees hostage since the start of summer over the Barack Obama administration's stance toward the coup, finally seems to have gotten his way.  This past week, after supposedly brokering a deal that would have returned Honduran president Manuel Zelaya back to power, the Obama administration reversed its insistence on restoring Zelaya as a precondition to recognizing the upcoming elections, and indicated that it would accept the electoral outcome, with or without Zelaya on the scene.  The reason for this change of heart?  The White House decided that confirmation of its nominees was more important than defending democracy from creeping authoritarianism in Honduras. 

The conservative congressman wasted no time after releasing the Obama administration from its headlock to announce his victory over the White House.

"I am happy to report the Obama Administration has finally reversed its misguided Honduran policy and will fully recognize the November 29th elections," DeMint said in a press release. "Secretary Clinton and Assistant Secretary Shannon have assured me that the U.S. will recognize the outcome of the Honduran elections regardless of whether Manuel Zelaya is reinstated. I take our administration at their word that they will now side with the Honduran people and end their focus on the disgraced Zelaya."

He went on to turn the knife still further in the bloody body of Honduran democracy by noting that

"Now, thanks to the Obama Administration's welcome reversal, the new government sworn into office next January can expect the full support of the United States and I hope the entire international community. I trust Secretary Clinton and Mr. Shannon to keep their word, but this is the beginning of the process, not the end. I will eagerly watch the elections, and continue closely monitoring our administration's future actions with respect to Honduras and Latin America."

The senator immediately lifted his objections to the nominees. 

Demint's victory comes at no small cost.  From the standpoint of US foreign affairs, while DeMint may have won this particular fight in the name of frustrating Obama's ability to conduct a constructive foreign policy in the region, the senator has done considerable damage to Washington's ability to secure its national interest in the Americas-now and, I suspect, far into the future. 

In the near term, the US about-face has had the effect of alienating Washington from its key allies in the region.  Last week, the powerful Rio Group (which includes, importantly, Mexico and Brazil) met to issue an unequivocal statement demanding Zelaya's immediate reinstatement.  All twenty-four of its members signed on, and many reinforced their commitment at the recent OAS gathering a few days later, leaving the United States the only major regional player not on board.  But apparently Washington doesn't much care.  In response to resistance to its new stance at the OAS, American representative to the organization Lewis Amselem had this to say to his regional counterparts: "I've heard many in this room say that they will not recognize the elections in Honduras.  I'm not trying to be a wiseguy, but what does that mean? What does that mean in the real world, not in the world of magical realism?"

In the long term, by forcing the administration's hand, DeMint has reinforced the widely held impression that the United States is willing to sacrifice its principles in favor of expediency and still acts according to a Cold War logic that finds existential threats hiding behind every grandstanding populist.  Any reset button the Obama team hoped to press in US-Latin American affairs will likely have been short-circuited by this latest development, coming on the heels as it does of the deeply unpopular American troop increase in Colombia, which has opened its own can of worms.  And with Republicans smelling blood, expect forward progress on normalizing relations with Cuba to be slowed still further.  

More importantly, beyond the damage done to American interests in the region has been the violence and depravation visited on Honduras during the period of deadlock, and concerns that the bloodshed will increase as the elections draw closer.  The period of Micheletti's rule has spawned rising levels of human rights abuses, targeted killings, and assassinations (including the high profile murder of Micheletti's nephew).  And the recent spate of rocket propelled grenade attacks throughout the country-including, most recently, an attack on the building where the presidential ballots are stored)-has given heft to concerns that Zelaya's supporters will express their preference come election time with bullets rather than ballots.  At the same time, the severing of aid by neighboring countries and the European Union has had dire effects on the population, as Reuters reported last week in a disturbing piece of analysis.

"Poor Hondurans are going hungry and their sick children cannot obtain medicines as donors cut aid to the country following a June coup that deposed President Manuel Zelaya, doctors and aid workers say. Soup kitchens have closed, medicines have become scarce, foreign doctors have canceled trips to Honduras and funding for the poor to run small businesses have dried up, increasing unemployment...Honduras relied on around $1 billion a year in foreign loans, humanitarian aid and subsidized fuel from Venezuela, some 20 percent of the national budget. The United States is still providing humanitarian help, but the European Union has suspended about $97 million in aid and the World Bank in July halted $270 million in loans. The Inter-American Development Bank has held back $50 million... [Clinic] shelves once full of bottles and pills stand empty and doctors say they are helpless to combat a rise in dengue and swine flu in the country, where around half of the 7 million population live on $2 or less a day."

It's not clear if aid will be restored following the elections, but apparently none of this bothers Jim Demint. As far as he 's concerned, it was all worth it . "This marks an important step forward for the brave people of Honduras. They are proving, despite crushing hardship and impossible odds, that freedom and democracy can succeed anywhere people are willing to fight for it."

Trouble is, they already had it.  Now I'm not so sure.