Republicans are finally listening to the will of the American people! ------- GOP senator backs Plan E -- Exit Iraq The day after Republican Sen. Richard Lugar called for an Iraq pullout, Ohio's George Voinovich chimed in. WASHINGTON - Some Senate Republicans are suddenly pushing the White House to begin withdrawing most U.S. troops from Iraq, apparently deciding that they can't wait for a September report by the top general on the ground to call for changing course. A day after Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, declared that President Bush's Iraq plan isn't working and called for withdrawing most U.S. forces, Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said he was writing Bush on Tuesday to urge him to embrace a Plan E -- for exit. Republican Sens. John Warner of Virginia and Susan Collins of Maine said Lugar's comments would carry weight with fellow Republicans. http://www.startribune.com/587/story/1270430.html
Josh's thoughts on the republican break from the president. --------------------- The front blurb on the new CNN Iraq poll is sufficiently to-the-point that I'm going to quote it in its entirety ... Dick Lugar's very public pulling of the plug on the president's policy is an indicator of the trend. The number referenced toward the end is 38% -- the number of self-identified Republicans who say they oppose the war. (I wasn't able to find a partisan break-out of the numbers in the CNN data. So I'm not clear what the number jumped up from.) This all puts in stark terms the intense anxiety now palpitating Republican hearts in Washington, DC. One number is 38%. Another number is 17, the number of months before the 2008 election. President Bush gives every indication that he intends to keep troop deployments at their current level through January 2009. Sure, if everyone chills out in Iraq and finally throws him the parade the president is holding out for, he'll begin bringing the troops home. But on planet Earth it's stay through course through 1/09. The president's ability to pull that off -- both in terms of raw votes and public sentiment -- rests almost entirely on a solid phalanx of support among congressional Republicans and 2008 Republican presidential aspirants. They don't have to be for the president's war or his conduct of it. But they need to stay resolutely opposed to Democratic efforts to end it. As long as that's the case, as long as the vast majority of Republicans oppose Democratic attempts to end the war, that will keep Democrats (not saying it's right, just observing the dynamics) from really going to the mat over it. And as long as Democrats don't force a major confrontation that keeps it all sort of murky in the public mind who's for or against. But eventually -- maybe as soon as September -- public opposition will become so overwhelming that the Democrats may be willing to really force the matter and not worry about lacking any bipartisan cover. Or maybe by September enough Republicans will see the numbers and give in and give the Democrats their veto-proof majorities. However it happens, whatever gives way first, the trend is unmistakable. And even if the Republicans can maintain unity and defy political gravity through 2008 they can see as well as anyone what will happen if they go into the 2008 election with sub-30% support on the defining issue of the day. The key is -- for some liminal period over the next several months -- there's still a paradoxical safety in numbers for Republicans, sticking with the president. But no one wants to be the last one to the door. If you're a Republican congressman and you've been carrying the president's water on Iraq for years you don't want to be on the losing side when the Congress finally ends the war in spite of the president. At that point, even if you flip flop and start saying we've got to change course and try to get on the right side of public opinion, then you're probably just doubly screwed. And if it's mid-2008 at that point you're really not in a good place. Someone better versed than I in the intricacies of game theory could suss out all the dynamics. But the key is that folks are getting nervous and they're quite right to do so. The truth is that the president is playing a very high-stakes game of chicken with his fellow Republicans. He's driving a hundred miles an hour toward the cliff, way too fast to jump out of the car without risking serious injury. But as the cliff gets closer, they'll start to jump. -- Josh Marshall
Finally found this, mc mark. It´s weird being on vacation and having one of your kids spill a glass of water on your only available laptop. Instantly cut off from the internet. I´ve been watching CNN International, the only available English news, other than the odd newspaper here and there, and this version of CNN sucks. (unless you´re a football fan, as in soccer... of course, CNN in the US sucks as well, but at least there´s a ton of idiotic info and BS to sift through, and one can find some gems) There were little blurbs about Lugar, which I thought was huge news, but no details. Most strange seeing the GOP come apart, pieces flying everywhere, from a tiny island in a warm sea. D&D. Replicant Travels.
Well I'm glad you know the line but that really wasn't the crux of the post. So What? Now you're ridiculing and denouncing war supporters?
I said before the 2004 election that Bush and Iraq would be radioactive for Republicans in 2008. If they are suicidal, they can just hang on to Bush and die. My bet is that the GOP would rather abandon Bush than get obliterated in 08. This garbage of supporting him because he's your party's president is crazy. Lugar shouldn't have waited this long but I guess is it's better late than never.
Wasn't Lugar the same guy who tried to compare his heavily guarded walk through an Iraqi market to being in Indiana?
I took your advice. The chairs in the best internet cafe I could find were too damn hard, anyway. D&D. Replicant Vacation Over... Damn it! Who the hell did we draft??
Deckard, hope you had a great vaca. I was starting to worry about your absence...Right now I have the laptop with the wife and kids at the Smyrna, Tn. firework exhibit....Lotsa folks here and I may be the only idiot with a wireless connection in the near dark at the town park... Have fun and look forward to the debates in the near future!
They can still turn this around by ditching Iraq in favor of securing our borders against those dirty illegal immigrants. By shifting the definition of security and highlighting the failures of the Dem controlled congress while morphing the gains of Wall Street into macroscopic prosperity, I'd say they have a fighting chance. After all, people think the Dems have the upper hand next year.
