Iraq and roll over-Why the antiwar surge failed in Congress.

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/09/26/congress_v_iraq/

Iraq and roll over

Why the antiwar surge failed in Congress.

By Walter Shapiro



It is time to face the blunt truth: This Congress, despite its nominal Democratic majorities, is not going to hasten the end of the Iraq war. This is not defeatism on the home front nor is it a rant against the accommodationist tactics of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Rather, this inescapable conclusion is based on the coin of the realm on Capitol Hill -- the stark arithmetic of head counts.

Any ambiguity was put to rest last week by a series of Senate votes on the Pentagon spending bill that demonstrated that the Republican Party remains immune to any surge in antiwar sentiment. Six GOP votes were the high-water mark; they were cast in favor of a ballyhooed amendment (sponsored by Virginia freshman Democrat Jim Webb) to prompt a back-door drawdown in troops by limiting the duration of deployments to Iraq. But not a single Republican supported legislation advanced by Reid and Wisconsin's Russ Feingold to mandate a funding cutoff for most U.S. troops in Iraq by next summer. Reid-Feingold -- the most explicit expression of antiwar sentiment -- lost by a lopsided vote of 70-28, virtually the same margin as back in May.

Favoring gauzy spin over gimlet-eyed reality, some liberal Web sites tried to portray some of the Senate votes as majority triumphs (the Webb measure won 56 supporters) thwarted only by undemocratic filibuster rules (60 votes are needed to choke off debate). But that interpretation glosses over one of the rare constitutional provisions that the Bush White House still worships -- the presidential veto power. Even if a war-limitation amendment somehow made it through Congress (currently a dubious proposition), to overturn a Bush veto Democrats would have to corral 50 GOP votes in the House and 17 in the Senate (not counting über-hawk independent Joe Lieberman). And that calculus is based on the Panglossian assumption that House Democrats from conservative areas like southern Indiana would ever be willing to buck the White House on a vote that would be portrayed in Republican attack ads as not funding the troops in wartime.

More than nine months after taking power, about all that Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have achieved on the Iraq front is to unfairly share in the blame for mismanaging the conflict. A mid-September CBS News Poll found that only 31 percent of voters approve of the way that "Democrats in Congress are handling the situation with Iraq." (About the only consolation for Democrats is that George W. Bush's approval rating on the same question was 25 percent.) More ominous for Reid and Pelosi was a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released last week, which found that 61 percent of Democrats surveyed believe their party's leaders in Congress are not going "far enough" in challenging Bush policies in Iraq.

Whether held by Code Pink demonstrators in Washington or rank-and-file Democrats who will be attending the Iowa caucuses, these stop-dithering-and-stop-the-war passions fuel unfortunate misconceptions. Pelosi, in particular, erred in unduly raising antiwar expectations when she took over as the first Democratic speaker in a dozen years. It was the Gingrich Revolution in reverse, this time with Democrats failing to appreciate the balance-of-power realities of a congressional showdown with an unyielding president, however wounded.

In the Senate, Reid is majority leader by the frailest of margins -- literally, Lieberman's vote as an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. The notion -- often raised by bloggers and activists -- that Reid could defeat a filibuster by forcing the Senate to stay in session 24/7 is as ludicrous as requiring Republicans to stand on one foot and quack like a duck as they voted. A Senate leader employs a heavy hand only when he has the votes; otherwise he must rule by persuasion. Reid may not be the most artful of majority leaders, but his strategic error (and he had few other options) was believing that he could win the votes of enough wavering Republicans to make a difference on moderate antiwar measures.

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/09/26/congress_v_iraq/

[4dsc]

1. Damn if only they had held impeachment hearing

I truely believe our leadership lets us down by not pursuing impeachment hearing this year.. They let the republicans run all over us and still they display no backbone..

[jacksonian]

2. yet another cry for impeachment

without a mention of a specific provable charge that can be traced, without argument, directly to Bush. Without that, all you're talking is a grand rallying cry for the GOP.

As dumb as all the cries for leaving this very, very stupid war without fear of creating a Treaty of Versalles moment that only leads to an even more evil next war.

To me, people throwing up their hands because it's difficult to defeat a 200,000 year old beast with 51 votes in the Senate are the ones lacking backbone. The bad guys control the White House, nearly all of the MSM, most of the courts, and have filibuster abilities in Congress. The good guys have a slim majority in one branch of government, a fragile coalition of support, and beg for airtime. No fight was ever won by expecting too much.

The problem isn't lack of Democratic backbone, it's that the Repubicans have way too much. And they can only do that because they have the MSM in their pocket proclaiming all their shit is sugar. And that same media is tickled to death to get you repeating the "Dems have no backbone" meme. Don't act like it's some level playing field - it isn't.