Senate Republicans Filibuster War Debate

I'm been on and off lately; hopefully that will change in the next few days (work stuff, playing with my new Macbook). In the meantime, the debate on the war continues to twist around in circles. As the President carries on with escalation, and starts laying the groundwork for possible confrontations with Iran, Democrats in the Senate have been debating which of their non-binding anti-escalation resolutions is the nicest. As bad as that was, Senate Republicans have been making it worse.

Now GOP'ers have been playing an interesting game lately. With so many of them up for reelection in 2008 (many more than were last year), they are publicly criticizing the war-- to varying degrees-- but their actual support of it hasn't diminished much. They proved that this afternoon. With the official debate of the anti-escalation measures set to begin today, Republicans filibustered it. The AP has details-

Republicans blocked a full-fledged Senate debate over Iraq on Monday, but Democrats vowed they still would find a way to force President Bush to change course in a war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 U.S. troops...

[The] vote ... sidetracked a nonbinding measure expressing disagreement with Bush's plan to deploy an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq.

The vote was 49-47, or 11 short of the 60 needed to go ahead with debate, and left the fate of the measure uncertain...

....But behind the procedural quarrel lay uncertainty about the verdict the Senate would ultimately reach on Bush's decision to send 21,500 additional troops.

Democrats hoped to gain enough Republican votes to pass the measure expressing disagreement with Bush's decision, and to send the commander in chief an extraordinary wartime rebuke on a bipartisan vote...

To no suprise, the Republicans were joined by Sen. Lieberman in filibustering the debate.

I am not 100% sure why Republicans pulled this, symbolically standing by the President today when he is at his least popular. There are a number of reasons, as I see them.

The first is just typical power jockeying. The Republicans are saying "If we critique our glorious Commander-In-Chief at all, it will be on our terms". This can only work if the Democrats let it. It isn't 2002 anymore. The Democrats are in charge now. I hope that the Democrats understand that, otherwise we're all in trouble.

The second thing is that the Republican base still really loves this war, in every contradictory way possible (trying to keep track will drive you nuts). So while the Republicans need to appear critical of the war to some degree to appease the general public, they can't actually take any substantive action against it without alienating themselves from their pro-war base.

Hence, filibustering a debate while pretending that you simply want the 'right' kind of debate.

It's going to be a looonnggg two years, folks.

My prediction: As bad as we all think things are now with the war, with our foreign policy in general.... it will be a lot worse by the time 2008 rolls around. That moment of sanity we had in November after the midterms is gone. We now have a President going for broke and a Republican minority fighting for their life against a Democratic majority who were in turn hoping things would've been easier. If the latter can at least see the next disaster coming, maybe there's a silver lining there. I'll have more thoughts on that tomorrow.

[PS- For those interested, a list of the Republicans up for reelection next year who filibustered the anti-escalation debate is available here. Yes, even Mr. Hagel is on there. Also, President Bush's new budget proposal-- a cornucopia of wishful thinking-- reiterates just how little regard he gives his war once he gets to cut and run back to Crawford.

UPDATE: Detailed analysis- here. As it notes, while all this goes down, the war continues...]