Reality starts seeping in
Apparently, Congress is waking up to the fact that the majority of Americans actually want to win the war in Iraq. According to S.A. Miller of the Washington Times;
Republicans in Congress — including most who have defected from President Bush’s plan to send reinforcements to Iraq — have closed ranks and are prepared to thwart the Democrats’ continued efforts to undermine the war strategy.
   Most of the 17 House Republicans who voted for a resolution against the troop-surge plan — which was about half the number predicted by Democrats — now oppose moves to cut war funding or attach conditions to appropriations bills that would hamstring the war effort.
   All but one of the seven Senate Republicans that backed the anti-surge resolution in their chamber say they will not support any funding cuts. The one other dissident Republican — Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska — declined to comment on the issue.
   “I don’t think we should micromanage the war or tie the president’s hands,” said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, a Virginia Republican who last month voted with Democrats to pass a nonbinding resolution disapproving of Mr. Bush’s plan to deploy 21,500 more troops.
   “The question of the surge was one of policy [and] an opportunity for me to express my frustration with the policy,” Mr. Davis said. “But when it comes to conducting the war, that is the president’s authority. … We have to close ranks behind him and allow this [plan] to work.”
What else could make those purely political animals do such a sudden about face unless it’s the realization that Americans aren’t supporting their stance against the President.
Republicans aren’t the only ones. Donald Lambro of the Washington Times writes;
A senior Democratic adviser said yesterday he is disappointed and dismayed by the efforts of House and Senate Democrats to change administration policies in Iraq, predicting they would lead to further division and stalemate in Congress on the war.
   “If you stand back, the whole debate has been pretty frustrating. The bigger problem is that [Democratic leaders’] proposals are not going anywhere, such as some revised authority for the war,” said Leon Panetta, a key Democratic member of the Iraq Study Group whose proposals to stabilize Iraq were largely dismissed by President Bush.
   “But those efforts are doomed. Either they are going to be blocked in Congress or vetoed by the president, or both. The end result is that it will make us more divided and impotent on war policy,” President Clinton’s former White House chief of staff said in an interview with The Washington Times.
   Mr. Panetta’s blunt complaints about how his party has bungled the war debate underscores a partywide discomfort among many Democrats that their leaders have failed to craft a politically viable compromise that can draw some bipartisan support.
And Panetta’s not the only one;
 “A lot of [the Democrats’] efforts have been pointless,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution who advises Democrats on national security issues.
   “So I think, rather than monkeying around [with anti-war legislation], they should wait until the fall and basically say, whether you like Bush’s handling of the war or not, at least recognize it is reasonable that it could work and give it six more months,” Mr. O’Hanlon said.
So, everyone is beginning to realize that the voters’ revolt against the Republican congress wasn’t about the President at all. It was about AMericans’ frustration with Republicans in Congress and their inability to run it with any semblance of order. Now the Democrats are beginning to realize that they didn’t win the election because of President Bush at al, no matter how hard they tried to make it about him. And the group they’ve been pandering to are just a tiny bunch of whackos trying to end the war for their own selfish reasons.
Nothing in the Washington Post about this. Only stories about the chief of Walter Reed being fired and some Congressional Democrat who happened to be an Iraq vet. I guess the fact that the Democrats are losing their one big issue isn’t worth a column inch or two.
Category: Politics
