Do Democrats think this will help their public standing?

In last year’s elections, the Dems ran on two things, Iraq and pork-barrel spending. The bill they passed Friday obliterates their message on both fronts.

In an apparent effort to remind people just why the Framers of the Constitution sought to give the President, and not some unwieldy group of 535, the power to set foreign policy, the House set a hard date for removal of US forces. Not a near-term date, mind you, that would say We have voted to end this thing, begin leaving now. Nor a flexible date that acknowledges the realities of the situation. No, they picked an arbitrary and seemingly random date, far enough out that they can claim they aren’t bailing on the mission, but just close enough to satisy (they hope) the radical elements who increasing call the shots from the fringe.

Also in the bill is massive pork barrel spending that brings more quickly the conclusion that everyone new would come soon enough — that Democratic claims that they would rein in spending were laughable from the start. Now, for Republicans to vote against the Iraq war bill, they will also have to vote against certain spending provisions that they may support. This is the Democrats’ serious way of dealing with Iraq?!

You will recall that anytime a story emerged that the White House sought to gain public accolade for a war-related announcement, liberal sites (and some members of this blog) launched an all out attack, arguing, apparently in all sincerity, that they were just shocked and appalled. How dare he “play politics” with the lives of Americans, they would intone. Now the Democrats have done them one better, not only trying to calculate the politics of the presentation, but actually crafting the policy itself from an explicitly political standpoint. Are their liberals who will now argue that all of this adds up to a serious policy? Or even a serious way of dealing with the existing policy?

The Democrats are playing a very serious gamble here, and that’s all it is — a political double-down, seperated completely from its potential implications in the real world. They will soon begin to be dismissed by serious foreign policy thinkers not only in the corridors of the US power structure, but in capitals throughout the world. And they have now, more than ever before and without the possibility of retreat, tied their political fortunes to the prospect of a clear US defeat. In light of what they did Friday, a steady decline in the violence in Iraq and the emergence of an Iraqi civil state would at this point be devestating to the Democrats’ near and far term political outlook.

Do Democrats think at all?

No.

They just emote.

2 posted on 03/25/2007 10:40:52 PM PDT by conserveababe (A wise man (or woman) knows much and says little. A fool knows little and says much.)

The Democrats knew Bush would veto this legislation all along, and they are hoping this will appease their own wacky extremists and the general public who would like to see an end to the war in Iraq--they are gambling that from now on they don't have to do anything to end the war because they can say "Hey, we TRIED, but Bush vetoed it! Give us the WH in 2008 and we can do it!"

That's all this is. Helen Keller could see it.

3 posted on 03/25/2007 10:50:23 PM PDT by Darkwolf377 (Anti-socialist Bostonian, Anti-Illegal Immigration Bush supporter, Pro-Life Atheist)

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