Iraq may split Bush and GOP

[struggle4progress]

By Dick Polman
Inquirer Political Analyst
As President Bush prepares to "surge and accelerate" in Iraq, conventional wisdom decrees that he needs to work closely with his Democratic foes. But maybe his biggest political problem right now is that he is on the verge of losing his friends.

Consider the metamorphosis of Gordon Smith. When I interviewed the Republican senator from Oregon during the spring of 2004, he was marching in step with Bush on the war, declaring that "we'll win only if we are resolute." But today he is fed up; in a Senate floor speech on Dec. 7, he declared: "I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore... . We have no business being a policeman in someone else's civil war."

When a mainstream Republican senator - as opposed to, say, Cindy Sheehan - is willing to suggest publicly that Bush's war strategy might be "criminal," one can reasonably conclude that the GOP on Capitol Hill is no longer willing to take its marching orders from the wartime commander in chief. The era of lockstep complicity is over ...

So, politically speaking, there is a growing desire to cut and run from Bush. The first order of business is to make it clear that rank-and-file Republicans don't share the president's urge to "surge." Sen. Susan Collins of Maine doesn't like it. Neither does Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, who says: "I think it would create more targets. I think it would put more life at risk." When Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the departing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked last weekend whether he backed a troop surge, he offered this stellar endorsement: "I don't know whether I do or not." ...

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/16399572.htm

[Kagemusha]

1. Yeah but... Republicans tend to vote with the Leader when it counts

That's their pattern and it's not going to be easy to change it now...

[Skittles]

2. yes, they don't "march in step", they GOOSE-STEP

fascist bastards

[struggle4progress]

4. If Ds play a good game, the charge "R = W" will hurt worse in 08 than in 06

[Olney Blue]

3. The GOP has blood on their hands for enabling the Decider.

The least they can do is conduct an intervention.