Thursday, July 05, 2007

Republican Senators Break Ranks With Bush Over Iraq

It started last year when Senator Chuck Hagel (R - Nebraska) became the vanguard in splitting with his president on Iraq war policy. Then things seemed to have quieted down in the GOP as Bush’s “Surge” was announced and then implemented.

Until last week.

On June 27, Senator Richard Lugar, (R - Indiana) announced on the Senate floor a change in his stance on the War in Iraq. The purpose of “The Surge” was to "give time for the Iraqi politicians to work out the constitutional elements, not only the oil law, but the local elections, a whole raft of things.”

Lugar is calling for reassignment of American troops in Iraq; pulling them off the front lines and retasked to training Iraqis.

And to have the troops back home by March 2008.

In other words, this conservative Senator has totally embraced the conclusions of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. The ones that Bush completely dismissed late last year.

Adding his voice to the chorus was another Republican Senator, George Voinovich (R-Ohio) who rose in support of his GOP colleague saying that there wasn’t enough fear in the Iraqi government. Once they “know we are genuinely leaving, I think all of a sudden the fear of God will descend upon them and say 'We've got to get involved in this thing.'"

There they go again with this fear thing. It has stopped working here so maybe they can get it to work over there. Perhaps it's something like we make them afraid over there so we don’t have to be afraid over here.

Then today, Senator Pete Domenici (R- New Mexico) has echoed Lugar, Hagel and Voinovich.

“I have carefully studied the Iraq situation, and believe we cannot continue asking our troops to sacrifice indefinitely while the Iraqi government is not making measurable progress to move its country forward.”

Rumored to be poised to join this double-crossing quartet are John Warner (R - Virginia), John Sununu (R – New Hampshire), Norm Coleman (R - Minnesota), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Richard Burr (R – North Carolina).

That makes nine. And that plus the Democratic fifty-one makes it sixty.

Now all we need is some legislation that can be agreed to with this new supermajority and we can get an Iraqi War Policy bill to Bush’s desk to receive another veto.

So . . . we need six more so we have enough to override the veto. So then we can have an Iraqi War policy law that Bush will ignore.

After the Scooter Libby fiasco, you think Bush cares about what people think of him? About his legacy?

What’s my point? I guess it’s this: it doesn’t matter who comes out for a new Iraq War Policy, or how many. This is Bush’s war and the only way it’s going to end is if it becomes a political expedient for Bush. Mentioned in some of the news websites that I have linked to, is that he needs to be thinking about the 2008 election and how it is going to be bad for Republicans, including the presidential candidate, if he doesn’t move on this issue.

Truth is, I don’t think he cares about that, either.

2 comments:

Sean Neoconnery said...

More and more Republicans fearing for their jobs are beginning to listen to their constituents. Wow, representing the people who elected them, what an amazing concept!

Anonymous said...

Don't count that rat fink Lieberman in with the Democrats, he's turning redder by the minute. I think he wants to attack Mars now.