On the occasion of this brilliant strategic move, I think I will dedicate the following Shakespeare passage to Harry Reid and friends.

O Lymoges! O Austria! thou dost shame
That bloody spoil: thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward!
Thou little valiant, great in villany!
Thou ever strong upon the stronger side!
Thou Fortune’s champion that dost never fight
But when her humorous ladyship is by
To teach thee safety! thou art perjured too,
And soothest up greatness. What a fool art thou,
A ramping fool, to brag and stamp and swear
Upon my party! Thou cold-blooded slave,
Hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side,
Been sworn my soldier, bidding me depend
Upon thy stars, thy fortune and thy strength,
And dost thou now fall over to my fores?
Thou wear a lion’s hide! doff it for shame,
And hang a calf’s-skin on those recreant limbs.
***
Keeping up pressure on Iraq serves the American people and it serves America’s best interests. Every pullout vote is agony for Republicans who know full well that standing behind the war will kill them in ’08. Snuffing the supplemental outright polls better and would make the Democrats look like they possess some fraction of a ballsack. Instead, by forfeiting decisionmaking power to the GOP our savant leaders prolong the pointless war and let the GOP own the pullout when Mitch McConnell generously decides that we should leave.
Republicans gleefully strung the noose and hung it on their own neck when they thought that their glorious war would cement GOP majorities forever. This idea that they get to decide when to leave dangles a golden opportunity for redemption that not a single one of them except Chuck Hagel (maybe) remotely deserves. I hope like heck that we have a viable alternative when the next leadership election comes around.
***Update***
Chris Bowers at MyDD supported the half-measures pullout bill because he believed that half was better than zero, apparently underestimating Dems’ ability to lose their spine in the clutch. Read Big Tent Democrat’s take on that debate, and a post on the compromise bill by Bowers’s blogmate Matt Stoller.
Also, I think that Reid’s defenders give Democratic leaders too much credit for good sense and strategy. Are those calf-skin shoes, Harry?
demimondian
I’m stupefied by the decision to cave on this, frankly. The Congress does not have to do anything — this is exactly the kind of situation which the division of powers is designed to create. The President must convince the Congress to provide funds; it is not the Congress’s responsibility to fund the President’s adventures.
In this case, the current compromise is worse than nothing — the left should work to block any funding bill at all.
Wilfred
Predictable. Where are all the Dem supporters who told us that all their maneuvering was a ‘cunning plan’ that we were too ‘childish’ to perceive: procedural rules, etc. etc.? It’s chickenhawks (R) versus chickenshits (D); always was, always will be.
Nicholas Weaver
I actually think its the right decision, simply because Bush and the holdout republicans are absolutely irrational.
They WOULD rather see the US troops in the field starve for beans and bullets than conceed defeat. Given such an opponent, there is no compromise, you can only fold or be complacent in the starvation.
However, I think that the democrats should, EVERY MONTH, introduce a new withdraw bill. Keep the fire going to make everyone with a still rational clue in the Republican party panicked.
Tulkinghorn
I would like to think this is so much judo on the part of Reid and Pelosi, but they have not managed to influence the message here. Why are they letting the White House controlling the message? It sure looks like a cave-in if we are not hearing otherwise by those in a position to argue otherwise.
Larry
Congressional politics is about counting votes. Without a veto-proof majority … which in this case means, without votes from Republicans, withdrawal-date measures are futile exercises that accomplish nothing. The White House is not “controlling the message,” nobody listens to the White House outside of the beltway. Not many listen inside the beltway any more, for that matter.
However, the one thing the GOP is doing is keeping its members in line, and until some of them defect, this is where we are, so we may as well adjust to it.
What we are doing now is called a punt, and in football, punting is an essential part of the game. No team gains a championship without a good punter. So it does no good to wring hands over the punt. The clock on this game runs out in November 2008, and not before. It’s the score on election day that matters.
Zombie Santa Claus
This is the kind of loyal oppositioning that got us into Iraq in the first place.
Mr Furious
Keith Olbermann was absolutely on fire over this last night. He rips into Reid, Pelosi AND Bush, and strikes many of the same points as Hilzoy — but in much more incediary style.
Video here.
CDB
They are going to Vote in Secret. They don’t even have the nerve to stand by the vote. Pitiful…
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/24/9255/80693
RareSanity
Democrats = gutless.
I’m reminded of a couple of lines from a Lewis Black stand up special:
And…
The Iraq War is bi-partisan agreement that the United States Government has every right to invade other countries and kill thousands of people “for their own good.”
Which brings me to the Madeline Albright quote during the Clinton administration that 500,000 Iraqi children starving to death were “worth it” to keep sanctions against Iraq.
Democrats and Republicans agree…killing Iraqis is worth it.
Larry
And, he’s wrong. He, and this thread, are about emotion and rhetoric. In reality, it’s about votes on the floor, political reality, and November, 2008.
Instead of yelling at Dems, concerned citizens should be writing to Republican members. It’s their votes that stand between us and ending the war, not the Dems.
Zifnab
NO! It is NOT the right decision. Playing Republican Lite (we don’t support the war, but we’ll give you the money anyway) to the true Republican Line (we do support the War, and we’ll take your money if we have to hold up the US Treasury at gunpoint to do it) does not make Democrats better people, it just makes them bigger pussies.
If the President were to be so irrational as to hold our troops hostage in Iraq and starve them, the US Congress would be within its rights to impeach him, revoke war powers, and order the troops home.
The options aren’t “quit” or “be complicant in an evil act”. They are “quit”, “remain complicate”, or “fight him for the reigns of power”. As it stands, leaving the troops out in Iraq with guns and food isn’t helping them any more than leaving them in a meatgrinder with guns and food. Quiting and acting helpless are both fools’ choices. Simply revoking funding won’t be enough. The Democrats need to order our troops home. Period. Anything less and they’re doing us no more favors than their Republican predecessors.
mrmobi
Yep, whenever my boss tell me to climb out on a limb and cut it off, I do it every time.
I agree, Tulk, they aren’t as good at managing the message as they should be.
I think you’ve got it just right, Nicholas. For the Party of Torture, the War in Iraq is just a means to an end. They’ve demonstrated clearly how indifferent they are to the soldiers in their mismanagement of practically every aspect of this catastrophe. This war is lost, and as it continues to devolve, the best, and probably only, thing Dems can be expected to do, is to put on record those who support this endless, meaningless carnage.
Not crazy about the sports analogy when people are dying in droves, but you’ve got it right, Larry. We don’t have the votes.
Got that, Tim? WE DON’T HAVE THE VOTES.
Zifnab
Dems are the only ones who listen to reason. Republicans just vote in bloc and spout talking points at you when they face opposition. You’d have better luck convincing a brick wall to change its position than a Republican Congressman.
So when the left wing applies heat, its not surprising they apply a great deal of it to the people who actually hear us. Make alot of noise to Pelosi and Reid. Yell at the Blue Dogs for tucking tail and running. Rail at every middling conservative Dem Senator who thinks a (D) next to his name makes him immune from criticism. These are the guys we can move on this issue. We’ve got 50 votes in the Senate and a majority in the House. We can keep feeding Bush bills till he chokes on them. Let Bush shut down the federal government, and let Republicans take the heat for complacency. The American public isn’t stupid anymore. They know what’s going on.
mrmobi
Very nice massive oversimplification there RareSanity.
Would you suggest to Dems who lose their jobs over a vote to cut off money for the troops that they lost them in a good cause? Because Republicans wouldn’t stoop to calling them Defeatocrats, right?
Olbermann is generally terrific, but he’s wrong on this. We just won control (and barely, in the Senate). People are dying needlessly in Iraq, but Democrats did not invent this war.
It’s going to be a long fight, and not one for folks who want instant gratification.
Tim H.
You punt when there’s two minutes left, you lose. If the dems didn’t plan on going to the mattresses, they shouldn’t have started. Right now, despite their pitiful posturing, the media is saying “Bush won, Dems caved.” See how that works next year.
Tulkinghorn
Why Congress is funding anything while the Secretary of State refuses a subpoena demanding she come in and explain what the hell we are doing over there is beyond me.
Does anybody know how to play this game?
And punting on the third down because you ran through your whole play book in the first two downs is not just a bad idea, it is proof you don’t know what you are doing.
RareSanity
No I am not suggesting that.
Those Dems weren’t elected to represent the Democratic Party, they were elected to represent their constituents. If they represent their constituents, they won’t lose their job. 70% of Americans want out of Iraq.
I submit to you by not voting to cut off funds, their jobs may be in greater danger.
Fecapult
Really, with this President, is there any way to have peace in our time? The Dems shouldn’t cave to appeasement. Voters wanted Dems to take a hard line and not back down to this mobster. It seems like America as a whole is very unhappy about this compromise.
mrmobi
The 1995 government shutdown battle was “won” by Clinton. Republicans over-reached and, surprisingly, the public sided with Clinton. But that wasn’t over war funding. I don’t think we could spin this our way, and one consequence could be a perception by the public (who watch American Idol, for fucks sake) that Dems don’t care about the troops.
Must we march out on that limb and cut it off this long before the election?
ThymeZone
Larry is absolutely right.
George Bush is not winning this contest. For proof, I offer you the replay of this morning’s press conference.
Watch him stand there and do his snickery heh-heh while joking about whether he is calling for a “Plan B”, and then making a big funny about calling it a “Plan BH” for “Baker Hamilton.” He thinks this is all about him, all about his ability to stonewall this thing and joke around about it.
But nobody is laughing, and like everything else he does, Bush is turning this into an embarassment for himself. It’s Memorial Day. People are putting flags on graves all over the country. Do they really want to see a president standing there and smirking and heh-heh-ing about a war and what we are going to call the “plan?”
Republicans are the reason you have a standoff, and right now they are on a suicide mission. Let them carry out that mission. They cannot win this contest. The contest for the minds of the people is over. The Dems are doing exactly the right thing by letting George Bush stand there and make, yet again, a complete ass of himself.
Face
Please, Tim, stop. All this shit about how it helps the R’s….please STFU. As Atrios says nearly every day, people hate Bush. They hate this war. They will forever link the two, and the Republican party as well, together.
It doesn’t matter who says what in September. The longer we stay, the more deaths we endure. This will be forever heaped on the shitpile that is the Bush Admin; Mitch Mac and his September oracles be dammed.
Reid is doing what he thinks is best. He’s surely not going to be in the Free Blowjobs With Bush line, so one must suspect he knows something we don’t, and is acting accordingly. Quit all the prostrating.
Tulkinghorn
Then make Bush win it. Make the Senate republicans filibuster something reasonable. Don’t take such a passive stance!
mrmobi
You know what? I hope you are right, but I’ll settle for “Bush won, Dems caved” at this point. There will be more war funding bills between now and the election. Personally, I’ll be sending regular emails to my congresscritters expressing my opposition to the war.
We can hope they get the idea.
les
How do you come up with the notion that Dems will jeopardize their jobs by voting with 70% of the electorate? That’s just nuts. And if you actually believe that not passing the supplemental will mean starving soldiers, while Dept. of Defense gets 1/3 of the U.S. budget, well, I got some WMD to sell ya. They might as well just wave their asses in the air and scream “put it to me, king!”
ThymeZone
And, what Face said.
Zifnab
When the Republicans shut down the government in 1995, they pissed alot of people off because suddenly the government wasn’t in business because Congress wanted to prove a point that the majority of America didn’t really care about. Republicans were supposed to cut taxes and wasteful spending, not turn off the post office or stop freeway construction.
In 2006, Democrats were specifically elected to shut off the war. Refunding through September with no timelines and no “surrender” dates does nothing to facilitate shutting off the war.
Even American Idol viewers knew Sanjaya sucked at singing. Even American voters know when the President sucks at governing. If Democrats revoke funding and push legislation to bring the troops home, even the 28%ers will recognize that its the President who continues to keep the troops in Iraq, not the Democrats. The Rs have taken their stand. We need to take ours.
RareSanity
Shouldn’t they have gotten the idea in November 2006?
This is exactly what I’m talking about how Dem and Repubs actually agree about this war. The Democratic Party is against this war just like Republican are for smaller government…only to get elected.
ThymeZone
Ideas don’t count in legislative politics. Votes count.
Zifnab
And, last I checked, we have a majority.
Bush already vetoed one spending bill. He’s threatened to veto everything else we’ve thrown up except “clean” gimme-what-I-want bills. So, clearly, he doesn’t want the money. We offered. Bush rejected. Now is not the time to roll over and pretend a super-majority is the only thing that will stop the President.
Tim H.
Somehow I don’t think in 2008 a battlecry that sounds like “Give us so many votes that we can’t possibly lose on anything, and then we’ll think about doing what you want” is going to much inspire the voters.
Tsulagi
Not agreeing this is a cave in. It’s dealing with reality. Sometimes it’s not fun.
Just like Petraeus doesn’t have the forces necessary to lock down Iraq putting the train wreck temporarily on pause, Dems don’t have the numbers to override a veto. That’s just the way it is. Right now.
Reality is Commander Guy is a brat in the extreme. He does not give two shits whether our troops in Iraq are fully funded or whether they had to eat sand and throw rocks. Gives even less shits about Iraq itself.
He has a toy. Even though he’s broken it, he’s not giving it up. You’d have to rip it from him. Again, Dems don’t have the numbers. If the retard promised to hold his breath until he got a clean funding bill, then I’d say keep sending the previous bill back as often as necessary. But that scenario isn’t going to happen anymore than he would ever keep a promise if it he didn’t think it benefited him directly.
Giving the idiot essentially no-strings attached funding for four months, while unpleasant, deals with that reality. It also gives four months for Republican congressmen and senators to feel more heat from public opinion knowing those people will be voting next year.
Currently they’re able to hide behind giving The Surge a chance. Showing their base they’re the responsible adults even though they know this thing could serve as the definition for FUBAR with no hope of unfucking it. But, more than one Pub has said they won’t have that cover come end of summer. Ship is sinking. They know it.
At that time, don’t see Dems having enough Pub cross-over for a veto-proof majority, but then they could really hammer away. The admin has sold The Surge as the last shot, let them die with it. Mitt will have another of his
flip-flopsconversions giving him absolute strength in his conviction that he’s known all along in his heart we should end Iraq. Other Pubs will too.Mikkel
I’m surprised the “we don’t have enough votes crowd” hasn’t mentioned Obama. I think that ending a war by dropping funding without 60 supporters is a universally bad idea. The Republicans might not listen to reason but there is one thing a politican values above all else and that’s their own skin. When you have 70% of the population against continuing the war the President’s way it shouldn’t be too hard to convince them that their hides are out. (FFS even the minority leader has said he might reconsider his vote in September. Sure he won’t for reals, but just saying that is amazing.)
They’ve gotten such good party loyalty because they’ve made it clear that was more important to success than what the people thought. But the party is in shambles and soon it won’t mean squat. Convince them of this and they’ll turn on their own.
ThymeZone
Get serious. It’s officially a 50-49 majority. In this situation, that’s just next to worthless. The only end game for the “keep voting for withdrawal” strategy is the 1995-style train wreck ….. a Republican strategy that backfired on them big time.
You know, if people aren’t going to take the time to understand legislative politics, they are going to spend a lot of time stamping their feet for nothing.
This situation changes only when GOP members defect and stop defending the Bush plan. Absent that, then this is your staus quo until January 2009. Get over it.
demimondian
Um, folks? The Dems don’t need to override a veto.
The Dems have the absolute right to specify how money is spent, and to put any conditions on that specification that they like. If the President chooses not to accept thos conditions, fine — then he doesn’t get the money for his war. That’s his problem, not the Dems.
Rusty Shackleford
I’m as disappointed as the next person that the Democrats were not able to convince 17 or 18 Republicans to vote with them…but I don’t blame them for it. We know who the Republicans are, how they work. They’re shit – from their leaders to their back-benchers. They don’t care about the troops – never did.
I’m not sure whether anyone else has noticed but the surge is not working and American soldiers are dying at an alarming rate the last few months. This is Bush’s war – it will go down in history as “Bush’s War” and he will not be judged kindly.
BFR
If the President chooses not to accept thos conditions, fine—then he doesn’t get the money for his war.
That the surge will continue until September is a fore
BFR
If the President chooses not to accept thos conditions, fine—then he doesn’t get the money for his war.
That the surge will continue until September is a foregone conclusion. It’s naive to think that the Pentagon can’t shift enough deck chairs around to sustain if for
empty
No. It is the people dying that matters.
ThymeZone
The only option in that column is called “defunding,” and they are not going to do that for obvious reasons. That’s a suicide mission. Why embark on a suicide mission when your opposition is already on one?
the game of chicken here is not over funding the war, it’s over the integrity of the Republican caucus. If they hold together and never crack, then they probably lose 6-8 more Senate seats and another 20-30 House seats next year.
If they crack, then …. we’ll see. I predicted (lastyear) that they’d crack by this summer. I think they will, and I think that’s why they have prepared their cover with all the scripted talk about September. In September, we get real on Capitol Hill. Not until then.
Zifnab
Bullshit.
The Republicans no longer run Congress. Stop pretending they do. If the President wants his funding, he’s going to have to eat a deadline. Period. If the President vetoes his own requested war funding, the Republicans – in their prime – would have had trouble spinning that. Now, no one is fooled anymore. Drop Iraq Funding off the table. Leave the bill in the dust. Kill it.
Let the Republicans scream about how Democrats hate the troops. They already played that card four years ago and its a non-seller. When they realize Dems are serious, they’ll come flip-flopping back for another Friedman of cash, even if it does mean “surrender dates”.
Tlaloc
I can’t be too upset. I never expected the dems to take some “Ms. Pelosi goes to washington” dramatic stand. They’ll wait ’til september when the politics will be more on their side and try again.
The truth is that other than actually defunding the war there is nothing congress can do. They can revoke the AUMF but the CRS analysis says that it’ll be entirely symbolic without a funding cut.
And right now a funding cut is politically dangerous. There is support in the public but not enough to weather the inevitable traitor ads the GOP will bring out (which WILL turn a percentage of the voters against defunding). So they’ll wait til september when they will almost certainly have more public support and try then.
It’s not ideal, but politics never is.
ThymeZone
That’s rhetoric. In this political game, they don’t matter.
If you don’t believe it, watch Bush’s presser from this morning. He couldn’t care less about the people dying.
Until the GOP members take away his cover, that’s what you get. There is nothing the Dems can do about it.
ThymeZone
Okay, you obviously have, and want, no understanding of the realties of legislative politics, and of a 50-49 majority.
Obviously you think that you know more about it than Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi do.
News flash: You don’t. Whether you like it or not, this is what you get. Whether you like it or not, this is the best you can get right now.
Face
Yes, exactly. It will galvanize the electorate to pay attention come September. Every time a score of soliders die, every time another base gets attacked, every time more soliders are taken hostage, a vast majority of Americans is going to glance at their calender and note the current month. This “September is everything” meme will be spread deep and wide by the media; it will be hyped like no other date since March 2003.
Come Sept., the R’s will be in the light. Their actions/votes will be highlighted. Bush will be under withering pressure to get out. AND HERE’S THE RUB–Bush still won’t exit, and his R’s are too chickenshit to go against him. Shorter–there’s not a chance in hell Mitch advocates a withdrawl. At this point, the Dems could ask for immediate withdrawl–they will have more standing than anyone, and the public galvanized behind them.
This is what I feel Reid is doing–setting up a guaranteed showdown that the R’s cannot win without either completely tearing apart their party, or losing another 25% of the electorate.
Zifnab
With said majority we’ve managed to pass the original Iraq Funding Bill. What’s more, the magical thing about a 50-49 majority is that it doesn’t take much to NOT pass a bill. If Dems decides to table Iraq Funding until Bush comes off his high horse, the Republicans don’t get to magically conjure up Bush’s money in some back room.
Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have themselves come out against this new funding bill. I’m honestly not even mad at them. It’s the Blue Dogs and the Bill Nelsons and Bob Kerrys I’m pissed at for scuttling away in terror.
This isn’t about getting money, this is about setting limits. A 50-49 majority gets you big fat strings attached to any bill the minority party wants passed. That’s a political reality Dems refuse to take advantage of.
ThymeZone
Exactly. Reid knows that the votes he is playing for right now are going to be cast in November of next year. He knows that his Senate majority will reflect exactly the public view of Bush and the war on that day. I see him ending up with 58 seats. I’d like 60 but I don’t think that’s realistic right now. I haven’t gone over the Senate cycle map that carefully. But the stage is being set for a complete collapse of the Republican party next year, and that is the ball upon which Reid is keeping his eye.
Bush knows that he gets to have the war his way until he leaves office, and there is nothing we can do about it. He has put his victory in that pissing contest over what’s good for the country.
His GOP members are foolishly lined up to defend him to the bitter end. Good for them. I support their effort, because I am looking at years of Democratic majorities in congress as a result.
ThymeZone
It’s necessary to distinguish theater from reality.
“I was for it before I was against it, after I was really for it.” Etc.
Reality is expressed in vote counts on the floor. That is the only reality. All the rest is sideshow.
empty
No, it is not rhetoric. If what matters is the people dying you will adopt strategies that carry the risk of losing political power. If what matters is the game then you will adopt strategies that carry the risk of large numbers of people dying. It is what you take as being of primary importance which determines your strategy.
I don’t know what your background is but let me take an example from academia to try and illustrate my point – and please remember, it is only an example.
Starting out in your career as a researcher if your primary objective is discovery of knowledge you will focus on the most likely avenues for discovery taking the risk that in six years you may have not published enough results, which in turn means no tenure, no job. If your primary goal is to achieve tenure you will focus on those problems that give quick solutions and publications so as to secure tenure, thinking that you will turn your attention to discovery when you have achieved security – something that in my observation does not happen too often. This is not an either/or situation. The fact that you strive for tenure does not mean that you are not interested in discovery, and that you won’t actually discover something useful. The same in the other direction. The fact that you are interested in discovery does not mean that you are not interested in job security. The difference will be in your focus and your approach to research.
The strategy that someone like Fiengold takes is premised primarily on what he sees as right. The strategy that someone like Lieberman adopts is focused primarily on keeping power. That does not mean Lieberman does not care about people dying – just that it is a secondary consideration. It does not mean Feingold does not like power – again it is a secondary consideration. Their strategies are shaped more by their primary considerations.
The Other Steve
I still suspect Reid is taking a long term view on this.
As I understand it, this funding bill comes up for renewal in September. That’s the month Bush promised us all, things would get better. (interesting how he put down a timetable, I thought he was opposed to timetables) That’s the story which makes it out into the news cycle.
Come September, things change. I doubt the Republicans will have much interesting in staying in Iraq. So they’re going to start to vote for withdraw, to protect their political bacon come 2008.
Zifnab
But after September, we just need to give it a few more months to know that the surge is working. Otherwise, we’ll be capitulating to terrorists. And if there’s one thing we don’t want to do, its get held hostage by a bunch of strong arming thugs who threaten to kill our troops if we don’t do what they want.
Rome Again
I gotta tell you, I was mad as hell about this too, but TZ, mrmobi and Face are making a lot of sense here. If two of my favorite people here (TZ and mrmobi) both agree this is what’s happening, I have a hard time concluding otherwise.
The problem seems to be with the idea that the new Dem Congress was promising us a way out of Iraq. But, did they really, or was that just media hype? I’m certainly no strategist myself, but it appears the rules of this game are not as easy as everyone wanted to believe, and the media seemed to push the idea that the rules were as simple as getting a Dem majority and talking tough.
Granted, many American voters are too busy earning money to eat, pay taxes, keep a roof over their children’s heads and such to fathom what concluding this war actually entails. I include myself in that category. I wanted to believe this war was going to end with commbative posturing from the new Dem majority, and it appears I was wrong.
I hope that the fall of GOP is a hard one.
ThymeZone
Yes, but you are making a moral argument.
This is a political scenario.
Oil, water.
Fledermaus
Yeah, I’ve got the world fucking smallest violin right here playing just for them. I’m pretty sure they will have nothing to worry about if they lose their seat, there’s no shortage of openings for weak-kneed democratic consultants
Dreggas
This, from all appearances is Rope-A-Dope. The dems don’t have the votes to override a Veto. Everyone understood that the Republicans, not the Dem’s killed the last funding bill, everyone but the now “quaint” 28 percenters. This leaves the Dem’s with a few options, send the same bill (which would not have been a bad thing), Vote against this bill in enough numbers to basically kill it, or Hold the republicans and bush’s feet to the fire with regard to “September” and making it clear that republican refusal to see reality is what led to this.
It looks like they caved but most understand the reality of the situation. As for the majority in the senate, wrong we do not have a majority on this issue because Lieberman would vote against timelines as well leaving the tie breaker up to Cheney and that’s only if some of the other Dems the so-called “Blue Dogs” don’t vote against them too. Yes some republicans did vote for the last bill but sadly it takes more than a few votes to override the shit head in the white house and he knows that, which is why he continues to smirk.
The blame for this lies squarely at the feet of the republicans and bush period, end of story. Everyone knows it. The majority of the people know it.
sglover
Sorry, but it’s this kind of thinking that has led the Dems to cede foreign policy issues to Republican cretins. It’s a “strategy” that forgets that there’s a whole big world beyond America’s borders.
It’s quite possible that severe ugliness will follow the withdrawal of occupation forces from Iraq. (That’s no reason to keep the forces there; events have pretty much slipped from their grasp anyway. All the empty bullshit about “strategies” and “surges” can’t cover up the reality that the insurgent factions have the initiative, and the long-term advantage.) Confronted with bad news on the TeeVee, our “well-informed” citizenry will immediately forget the backstory, and blame whoever is in office at the time. Presuming a Dem sweep in ’08, which until now was likely under almost any scenario, the victors will have nothing but painful choices as they try to clean up the wreckage of the Bush years. It’s somehow shrewd politics to add to this the myth that the Dems “lost” Iraq?!?!
If Democratic leadership was really thinking about the long haul, they’d realize that it’s essential to end Bush’s war while Bush is in office. And the only way to do that is to keep hammering away, until a significant fraction of his Republican enablers and dupes begin to fear for their own political survival.
Wilfred
Hot air, indeed. My computer screen is practically levitating from the comments of the Dem apologists.
Bottom line: Bush won. Again. Prediction: Lots more dead soldiers and brown skinned foreigners.
I suspect a bit of quid pro quo here. Not too much shoving on Iraq in exchange for the Immigration Bill. Shades of LBJ and the Great Society for Vietnam trade.
sglover
It looks like they caved because they caved. The supposedly dire scenario that you describe is the one that the Dems should lust for: A straight-up confrontation on the war, with the Republicans — led by Mr. Charisma himself, Dick “Five Deferments” Cheney — voting to piss away another $100 billion, and another 1000 soldiers.
ThymeZone
Well, only so far. This is the first quarter, not the fourth quarter. (Football again, I know. Sorry.)
First of all, posturing accomplishes nothing, it’s theatrical and aimed at the peanut gallery. Theatrics don’t govern.
Look at it this way: What does Bush have to lose? He has 28% approval. He can’t drop much lower, and won’t. He has the war, and like it or not, that’s all he has, and that’s … what he has. He has it. As long as he keeps his party votes in line on the Hill, he knows, and has known since last November, that there is nothing Democrats can do short of trying to create the 1995-style train wreck. He knows that isn’t going to happen. It would be a foolish and reckless waste of political capital.
If you want Congress to stop a war, you have elect more tha a razor-thin majority to operate against a monolithic minority. 50 Senate seats and 220 or so House seats are not enough.
I say again, it’s up to the Republicans to make the next move here. The ones on the Hill. Their scheme was to let the Dems run out their string of media opportunities around Memorial Day. Now they take the summer off and do what is really important to them, play golf and dine with lobbyists.
In the fall, after Labor Day, they will go back to work, and start figuring out how the hell they are going to get reelected next year. At that time, and not before, you will see change. By Thanksgiving I think you will see what next year is going to look like.
This thread is a waste of time, and breath. All the posturing right now is being done on the left by the childish foot-stompers who can’t stand the idea that they live in a political reality that isn’t to their liking. What they are missing is the big picture, namely, the ongoing and virtually irreversible descent of the GOP into also-ran status from which they may not recover for years and years. That’s what is important right now.
What you hear, here, is the crowd booing the punting unit because they want their team to go for it on fourth down.
Good coaches don’t listen to the crowd. They send in the kicking team and start planning the next possession.
Zifnab
I doubt it will ever go that far. Between “Dey’ve got da WMDees!”, “Six days, six weeks, I doubt six months”, and “Mission Accomplish!” I doubt anyone will ever convincingly sell the Iraq War as a Democratic Boondoggle (not that wingers won’t try).
However, this could potentially go down like Vietnam. With Bush playing the dumber, eviler LBJ, America will trundle through five years of quagmire before the war gets picked up by a smooth talking Nixon/Clinton “Peace with Honor” candidate and we get dragged through another five years of “secret plans” that see us bombing Syria or Iran before its all done. Few people blame Nixon for the embarassing end of the Vietnam War. I doubt many will blame Bush’s Democratic replacement for high-tailing it out of the Green Zone. But Nixon got thousands of US soldiers and millions of US dollars wasted in the jungle because he thought he was smarter than his predecessor. I really, really, really don’t want to see Bush’s replacement make the exact same mistake.
sglover
Which is why you’ve posted in it *11* times so far….
I.e., people who have the effrontery to disagree with you, no?
If you wanna talk about “big pictures”, how about this one: 2006 saw the largest turn-out for an off-year election in decades. Millions of otherwise indifferent or jaded people turned out to register their dismay, and vote in the only alternative available, Dems who promised (or at least strongly implied) a clean government and a way out of a disastrous war. The clean government promises are going by the boards as we speak, and on the war the Dems capitulated from a position of relative advantage.
All in all, it plays right into the “they’re all the same” cynicism that is one of the real toxins in our public life. As I mentioned above, as any sentient observer should know, whoever wins in ’08 is going to face severe problems. They’re going to need a large reservoir of support to see any meaningful initiatives through.
So sure, your kind of advice might help the Dems in ’08. So what? That’s an election for Dems to lose. The real big picture extends a little bit beyond one election cycle.
Tsulagi
That path leads nowhere. You’re assuming Bush is more than he is.
He has the authority to order current force levels to remain in Iraq. And they would. He doesn’t give a damn about any who are serving, other than that they serve his perceived best interests. If no supplemental were passed and signed, troops would still remain in Iraq on his order.
Anyway, even if he had a Mitt Romney conversion as he did with the Homeland Security bill and now announced he has always been for setting a withdrawal timetable, would you really expect him to follow through? Riiight. Or if a bill were passed over his veto, do you think Gonzo has forgotten how to write a finding? Please. “Enhanced” application and interpretation of the law are his specialty. Part of why he’s still there.
ThymeZone
That is not impossible, and it can happen if the Democratic party flubs the sure win that the GOP is handing it on a silver platter right now.
One way to flub it would be to waste time and energy posturing to cover up for the votes on the floor that aren’t there. But that’s just one of a bunch of ways to flub it. Another would be to nominate the wrong candidate for president in 2008. Hillary, for example.
Another would be to let the GOP succeed in goading us into letting Iraq take all the oxygen out of the atmosphere in DC and end up with a Congress that has done exactly nothing in two years. We need to be building a record of measures that help Americans and support the middle class. Republicans know that every day we waste posturing around a 50-vote majority that can’t prevail is a day that they win because we didn’t do anything useful.
There are a lot of ways to lose next year, and hand-wringing about Iraq posturing right now is a good way to get started.
ThymeZone
I’ve posted becasue I want to, ahd if you don’t like it you can shove it up your ass.
ThymeZone
Uh ho, actually, people who are childish foot stompers.
sglover
Good points. Thing is, the aftermath of the Iraq adventure could be (not “will be”, note) might hit home a lot more directly, and harder, than Vietnam ever could. The world economy never depended on anything coming out of Southeast Asia. If oil spikes beyond $100/bbl, people are going to turn on whoever is holding office. That’s when the “George Bush would never have let this happen” horseshit might take root….
ThymeZone
… turned out and got a 50-49 majority in the Senate.
Whatever you say, that’s what counts. The votes on the floor. That’s what determines what you get.
Unless those 50 are able to attract another dozen or more from the other side of the aisle, then this situation is what you get. It was entirely predictable and was in fact predicted six months ago. There is nothing you can do about it until the Republican members break ranks.
And you’ve totally misread my posts. I’m not giving advice to Dems in congress. They don’t need my advice.
I’m giving advice to people like you. Either grasp the reality of the situation, or prepare for a long period of useless frustration. And of course, prepare to lose sight of the long term goals, which can easily slip away if we fritter away our energy on things that cannot be changed.
Buck
And the ones who are still paying attention are getting a lesson in Government 101. Nothing to do now but count the dead until Thanksgiving. But why stop there? GWB has already said that as long as he is President we will be in Iraq. Well as long as we are in Iraq we will be counting the dead. So we still have a long, long road ahead of us.
sglover
Which, as you ought to know, had as much to do with the geographical distribution of open Senate seats as anything else. Given the (now broken) political structure established by the Constitution, that squeaker majority was a pretty loud rebuke to Bush’s party. The Senate seats in play in ’08 make that election much more favorable for Democrats. Unless, of course, they piss it away by confirming the widespread suspicion that they don’t really give a damn about anything, and thus are really not much different from their nominal opponents.
sglover
Should’ve included this in the previous post….
Uh huh. As I recall, the last time you were favoring “people like me” with advice was right after the Foley scandal broke out, when you were telling everyone that if the Dems seized the opportunity and ran with it, they were sure to lose. That was really prescient, wasn’t it?
Zifnab
We flipped 6 seats! And we lost none! That was a fucking miracle! You act like the November landslide was a hiccup. Not one Democrat lost his seat, and there were a few that deserved it.
Bush has the answer to your rebuilding efforts. It begins and ends with his veto pen. He’s wielded it twice now, against intensely popular causes. He’ll whip it out again for every minimum wage increase, EPA reform, Hurricane relief package, or medicare bill that crosses his desk.
Stop pretending like we’re going to get anything passed. The Democrats will never have the number of votes necessary to beat a veto unless the Republicans drag some unconsionable consession out of us first. Iraq is an issue we can win because it doesn’t need to be passed at all. When Bush vetoes an Iraq bill, Democrats win. It’s the best issue we’ve got.
sglover
Heh. Yeah, those “political realities” kinda cut both ways, don’t they? And speaking of counting votes, here’s something from Kevin Drum’s site:
THE WAR….Latest poll results on the Iraq war:
* 76% believe the war is going badly.
* 63% support a timetable for withdrawal in 2008.
* 76% think the surge is either making things worse or having no impact.
* Only 15% support open-ended funding. The rest either want to cut off funds completely or make them conditional on benchmarks.
* Large pluralities trust Dems more on foreign policy (51%-31%) and on making decisions about the war (51%-33%).
Plainly, grabbing the headlines by fighting for an end to the occupation is really a losing proposition.
demimondian
Actually, no, he doesn’t. Or, at least, he doesn’t have the authority to spend any money on them. I guess he can leave them in the desert sun without paying them — but that would go over like a lead ballon.
Ubertroll
Pwn3d!!!
Tsulagi
What, you think if a supplemental weren’t passed and signed all our soldiers in Iraq would immediately have to board busses and go home?
Soldiers get paid regardless whether they’re on their home base or deployed elsewhere. In a combat zone they get additional pay and other allowances. Activated reserve component soldiers also pick up medical for their dependents.
Earlier Gates said if there were an impasse in Congress delaying a supplemental, DoD could move money from other accounts to pay for Iraq for two or three months. Now if Bush and the Dem controlled Congress were both holding their breaths until the other gave up, I’m guessing Gates could take/borrow money from other areas or projects to go longer.
To save a little money, maybe suspend combat pay, medical, and other benefits families count on. Cancel leaves. Things like that would really go well with families and look good in the news. Cutting back on fuel for ground and air patrols. And more. Yeah, all good stuff.
Of course, though, all voters would blame Bush. Known truth. All the Dem Congress would have to do is point at him and say “He started it” in their best whine.
You want to have another Republican president and Congress again, by all means go with that plan. While accomplishing nothing regarding Iraq. But hey, at least Dems could show they’re capable of the same level of intelligence and competence shown by the Pubs for six years. Wow, maybe Bush is a uniter.