Today the Honduran regime and ousted former President Mel Zelaya struck a deal which would potentially return Zelaya to power briefly, if the Congress decided in his favor, and which would allow the upcoming elections to go through. It’s a victory for the diplomatic position of the OAS and the Obama Administration, who consistently sought a peaceful end to the standoff that resulted in reinstatement of the lawfully elected leader.

“We are optimistic because Hondurans can reach agreements that are fulfilled,” Zelaya told Radio Globo, an opposition station. “This signifies my return to power in the coming days, and peace for Honduras.”

The agreement, if it holds, could represent a much-needed foreign policy victory for the United States, which dispatched a senior team of diplomats to coax both sides back to the table.

Speaking to reporters in Islamabad, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called it “an historic agreement,” noting “this is a big step forward for the inter-American system.”

The question is how America’s biggest defender of the Honduran coup plotters, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), will react to this news. He previously called Zelaya a Chavez-style dictator, an illegitimate President and a despot, and described the people who woke Zelaya from his bed in his pajamas and forced him on a plane out of the country as freedom fighters defending democracy “from the ambitions of would-be tyrants and dictators.” Now those same freedom fighters have organized a way for the illegitimate despot to return to power.

I called Sen. DeMint’s office and was told his spokesman is out of town at the moment. A message about this has yet to be returned. However, the op-ed DeMint wrote about his “fact-finding mission” to Honduras, and a Fox News report about the trip, are still prominently featured at the top of DeMint’s Senate website. News of the deal is nowhere to be found.

More if it comes in…