War Games

Republicans have a habit of offering 'advice' to Democrats when they are most nervous-- ie. such as last August when VP Cheney and others warned Democrats that criticizing the Iraq war would lead to their electoral doom in 2006. Democrats fell for this trick in 2002 (voting for the Iraq war, etc) and in 2004 (John Kerry apologizing for practically every other thing he said), but 2006 was the year they called the GOP's bluff... and won.

With the Democrats not blinking in their fight to use the Iraq appropriations bill to push for an end to the war, war/Bush defenders (because it's the same thing to them) are jumping over each-- again-- to assure the Democratic party that this will be their political doom.

In Monday's NY Post-- a fair and balanced newspaper-- Dick Morris and Eileen McGann warn of the 'Dems' next debacle'-

"DEMOCRATS in Congress are heading into a game of chicken with the Bush White House akin to the Gingrich-Clinton government shutdown battle of 1995-96. The roles are reversed this time - so the Republicans are likely to prevail.

[Blueduck's note... Umm, Dick, as you of all people should remember, Mr. Clinton actually had political/popular support for his position. Mr. Bush does not. Key difference. Continue, please, though.]

The consequences will be lasting. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will find their party shattered. Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be forced to choose sides in their party's schism...

...Inadvertently forced into triangulation, Pelosi and Reid will be the unwilling instruments of a schism in their party from which it may not recover until after the 2008 election. The fault lines between those willing to fund the war without a withdrawal amendment and those who insist on a date certain for a pullout will define a growing split within the party akin to the one that drove students into the streets of Chicago outside the party convention in 1968..."

Wow, 1968 reference! I thought we were pretending it was 1972.

These are, of course, the same people who declared that Pelosi was a failed leader before she was even sworn in as Speaker, that she would never get a majority on her Iraq withdrawal votes, that Democrats only one the election because they'd become so super conservative, etc... Being wrong this often does not lend credibility.

It is true that President Bush will veto the current bill(s) just passed in the House and Senate. And it is true that will put Congress in the position of having to scrap together a new bill that can get passed with a majority vote.

But the message here is clear... the Democratic leadership wants to end the war. The President wants to prolong it. And the polls are pretty clear which side in that fight the public is backing (latest Pew poll says "A solid majority of Americans say they want their congressional representative to support a bill calling for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq by August 2008").

Whether funding will be appropriated in some form while this goes on will be a footnote.

(And the President is, of course, lying about the funding urgency.)

And if NBC's Andrea Mitchell is to believed, the moderate center of the Republican caucus secretly opposes the surge and is about 5 months away from cracking. Take that with a grain of salt, of course.

In addition, in regards to the President's veto threat on this legislation, it should also be noted that The Decider has also threatened to veto over a dozen bills passed by the new Congress (from stem cell research funding to cutting of student loan interest rates to negotiation over prescription drug prices to ending Big Oil subsidies, etc). All the public will see here is the President vetoing one more piece of popular legislation.

(Oh, and all the pork in the bill? Some of it deserves a closer look.)

So I will hold onto hope that the Democrats will ignore those of their opponents offering them 'advice', just as they successfully did last Fall. They may be taking a political risk in trying to wind down the war, but it is one that they have support for. And, in the end, it's just the right thing to do.