Everybody Gets It But Dubya

The center-right reaction to the McCain and Warner amendments (the former converting the GWOT into a Kerryesque "law enforcement operation," the latter doing everything but demanding an immediate withdrawal from Iraq) has been, to put it mildly, almost universally sulfuric:

"The me-too Republicans wimp out on Iraq"

One expected no better of the Senate Democrats, who want to get out of Iraq as soon as possible, or sooner than possible - most of them don't really care - and who want to embarrass president Bush. But couldn't the Senate Republicans have stood and fought against passing an irresponsible resolution suggesting that Americans want to get out of Iraq more than we want to win?....With today's vote in the Senate, the Republican leadership, apparently working hand in glove with White House staff, showed itself today to be tactically myopic and politically timid....one doesn't win a war by showing weakness. And one doesn't win a political fight by half capitulating to one's opponents, and, in effect, accepting the premises of their critique.

"Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory"

I wrote Monday that late last week, the Senate — after a year-and-a-half of fiddling while Rome burned — had finally acted to bar al Qaeda terrorists detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from using the courts of the American people as a weapon in their war against the American people. Well, when it comes to the Republican-controlled Senate, such lauding is always done at one’s peril. The ink was not yet dry (or the online equivalent) on that article when our distinguished senior legislators
struck another of their craven compromises....

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, Senator Lindsey Graham chose to make common cause with Senate Democrats, led by Senator Carl Levin, who favor treating the people trying to annihilate us as if they were ordinary criminal defendants. Yes, the military commissions favored by the Administration will go forward — at least for now. But the compromise would allow any prisoner who received a sentence of ten years or more of imprisonment (including death) automatically to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. The civilian courts will have the final say. [emphasis added]

"Sunshine Senators"

If the Bush Administration is under any illusions about the sorry political state of the Iraq war, yesterday's Senate action should dispel them. A Democratic proposal for a timetable for withdrawal was beaten back 58-40, but Republicans passed their own version to force the Administration to make quarterly progress reports to Congress and express its sense that 2006 should be the year when Iraqi security forces take the lead. Substantively, this might not have been particularly objectionable, but politically it was calamitous. It continued the narrative of Bush losing even his own party on Iraq — which is how the headlines have played the vote — and showed that Republicans are afraid to have a fight with Democrats even on ground that should favor them. [emphasis added]

"An Incontinent Congress"

Monday, for the first time, the foul odor of the Vietnam War denouement wafted through the Senate Chamber during the debate on Iraq. The Democrats called for "estimated dates for the phased redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Iraq … " Phased redeployment was the maneuver the French executed in June 1940, in the days preceding the German occupation of Paris. Phased redeployment is what the Vietnamese boat people did as they swam for their lives away from their homeland.

The Republican Senate "leadership," sensing they might lose enough Republican senators (six or more) to let the Democratic amendment pass, decided to quibble with rather than oppose the infamous document....No bureaucratic euphemism can cleanse the air of the stench of defeatism....

The Republican senators either no longer believe in the mission, or fear an unhappy electorate more than they fear the consequences of failure in Iraq. In all events - whether disillusioned or cynical or principled, whether Republican or Democratic - the majority of senators who are pushing for this want to get us out of Iraq more than they want us to succeed. Pay no attention to the words. Look to the character of the players. The infamous summer soldiers and sunshine patriots are forming a majority on the floor of the Senate - and national defeat and disgrace may soon, and again, find its moment....

Now the Watergate babies have grown old - and age has not improved them. They plan to finish their careers as they started them - in defeatism, betrayal and national dishonor. Oh, that America might see the last of these fish-eyed sacks of loathsome bile and infamy: Unwholesome in their birth; repugnant and stench-forming in their decline.

And, of course, the inimitably subtle Hugh Hewitt:

It is stunning to see Majority Leader Frist this morning describing asbestos legislation as the Senate's "first priority" in 2006.

Asbestos? First priority? There's a war going on and a SCOTUS nominee hung out to dry and avian flu warnings piling up. What could the Majority Leader be thinking, except a bald effort to change the subject from the rising discontent on the center-right over Monday's vote and the accompanying feeling that the country doesn't have the Congressional leadership it deserves.

....Majority Leader Frist is retiring, but do Rick Santorum, Jim Talent, and Conrad Burns want to fight '06 on these grounds? Are contenders for open or weak Democratic senate seats standing by and saying nothing as the GOP Senate marches over the cliff?

Go back to the floor and undo the damage of Monday. Then schedule a debate on the economy and the need for tax cuts to keep it moving. Start defending Alito, confirming lower court nominees, and praise the Vice President's speech last night. The lassitude and indifference to the pasting the Administration has been taking is simply amazing.

Get a spine.

Hey, I did say "sulfuric."

The aforelinked Tony Blankley had some (seemingly) obvious advice for the President:

I am heartened that President Bush is finally fighting back. He should veto any bill that would grant Congress even a syllable of war-fighting strategy. Mr. President, don't believe a word of their legislative prose. They have defeat in their hearts, and they mean you ill. Stand and fight with veto pen and executive order in hand. Rally with defiant words those of us who would yet be your honored supporters. Let the long suffering people of Iraq know that you will fight furiously for their redemption, and will be deaf to the impleadings of the weak and defeatist here in America.

One would not think that George W. Bush would even need to be nudged into defending his war-making powers. That stance is so emblematic of who and what he is as the nation's leader that his zealous defense of Executive power ought to go without saying.

But then again there was another instance, only six months ago, in which a robust White House defense of its judicial selection prerogatives was also thought to be a slam-dunk, only to perplexingly and flaccidly never materialize. So what do we wake up to this morning but the following Bush statement made from, of all ironic venues, Kyoto, Japan:

President Bush said yesterday that it was "a positive step" for the Senate to defeat a Democrat-led effort to establish a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

"The Senate, in a bipartisan fashion, rejected an amendment that would have taken our troops out of Iraq before the mission was complete," Mr. Bush said during a press conference in Kyoto with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. "To me, that was a positive step by the United States Senate."

Mr. Bush rejected a reporter's suggestion that he was embarrassed by the Senate's subsequent approval of a watered-down measure that requires the White House to give lawmakers regular progress reports on Iraq.

"That's to be expected," the President said of the measure, an amendment to the Senate version of a defense spending bill. "They expect us to keep them abreast of a plan that is going to work."

He added that he viewed the measure as "consistent with our strategy, and look forward to continue to work with the Congress."

A Congress controlled by his own party that continues to kneecap him at the behest of dishonest Democrat bullying on issues of utterly critical national security importance. And his best response is, "Okey-dokey."

Ed Morrissey calls this "taking the high road" and thinks it will provide Senate 'Pubbies "political cover from the conservative rage that swept across the New Media the last two days." I don't think he could be more wrong about that. As the Harriet Miers debacle illustrated, all this will do is add the White House to the target list of center-right anger.

If, as Ed also speculates, the Warner amendment is dropped in the House-Senate conference committee resolution, it won't be because of Bush acquiescence to this fratricidal outrage, but because we, his peeps, raised unshirted holy hell.

And what of the McCain amendment? Will Bush veto the defense appropriation over that one, as he has thretened? Or will he just "take a spoonful of [high-road] sugar" to make it somehow go down?