House GOP Calls Murtha's Bluff
There's a lot more to be said about Dem chickenhawk (redefined as a veteran who uses his service as a shield for his anti-war sedition) Representative Jack Murtha's Sheehanesque meltdown yesterday (which is another way of saying that I haven't had time to blog much today and now my posts will be pulled out of logical order by the speed of current events), but this Drudge story had me cheering out loud just a few minutes ago:
Yesssss! This is precisely what Republicans on Capitol Hill needed after the craven el foldo pulled by Senate Pachyderms on Monday. In fact, it is what the latter could have done if they had simply defeated the Levin amendment without offering up the me-too Warner substitute. It is also exactly what I predicted when I said yesterday that Murtha's rant ran the risk of "making it exceedingly difficult for Republicans to remain in a position of supine 'compromise.'" It, once again, overplayed the Democrat hand, and instead of inducing the majority party to fold, GOPers have "called" instead (There's no way on Earth that Hastert would put Murtha's Full Bore Ricochet Panic amendment to a vote if its crushing wasn't a lead pipe cinch), and the Donks have nothing. Their neurotic defeatism fetish commands only tiny minority of public support, no matter what the ASSociated Press wants us to believe. Small wonder Crazy Nancy had nothing to say.
Here's a prediction: the Murtha proposal will garner well over three hundred "nay" votes. For all their contrivedly overheated rhetoric of recent days and weeks, those Jackasses not in safe seats are not about to live up to it and stampede straight over the political cliff. If House 'Pubbies can control their flight urge and not repeat the foolhardiness of their Senate counterparts, this latest beat-down of the National Suicide Caucus will provide the White House/GOP push-back on the war all the momentum it needs, as well as a fresh lesson on the need to look farther ahead than the next 24-hour news cycle (or the next bogus poll, whichever comes first).
Whether they make good use of that momentum is a wager above my pay grade and against my better judgment. But after this stomach-turning week, tonight's vote will be a hearteningly good start.
UPDATE II: Update I got destroyed when my PC spontaneously rebooted. It took me three f'ing hours to compose. I've never come so close to taking a baseball bat to the damned thing.
They say never to blog when you're pissed. Now I know what they mean.
F it all sideways. I'll try again tomorrow on a different machine that will hopefully f'ing work properly. If this piece of crap pulled this stunt again, I'd have a stroke.
I'm outta here.
UPDATE III: Screw tomorrow. I'm on my other machine, I'm still angry, and I'm going to do this update if it kills me.
UPDATE I: I'll never reproduce the quality, eloquence, and incendiary wit of the original, so this is the condensed version.
After several hours of frothing, frenzied futility characterized by this example of what might be called "speaking the truth to miserable, boorish, quisling swine," House Donks were unable to stop preliminary procedural approval of a final vote on the Murtha resolution. Then, per Crazy Nancy's cynical instructions and my prognostication above, the Democrats' craven, cowardly, despicable, "bare-lubed-ass-in-the-air" sedition was demolished by a margin of four hundred votes.
Call it political cut & run. The real vote was the first one to try and avoid being so publicly tied to their unconscionably defeatist rhetoric. They know Republicans had them dead to rights precisely because public opinion is not with their "party before country," "Bush is worse than bin Laden" crypto-treason. If Senate Republicans had mustered the balls to do the same thing to the Levin amendment on Monday minus a "cut & run lite" substitute, maybe this House "showdown" wouldn't have been necessary.
Nonetheless, it does spectacularly illustrate how easily the DisLoyal Opposition can be slapped down and how the Bush White House and congressional 'Pubbies can use their majority status to get their mojo back. But only if they stay engaged in the public relations fight. If today's exercise proves to be an aberration followed by a subsiding back into complacent, tone-deaf somnolence, it will have all been for naught.
In light of that, this story is an encouraging sign that the gloves may indeed stay off for a while.
[HT: Michelle Malkin]
House Republicans, sensing an opportunity for political advantage, maneuvered for a quick vote and swift rejection Friday of a Democratic lawmaker's call for an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq.
"We want to make sure that we support our troops that are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-IL "We will not retreat."
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi had no immediate reaction to the planned vote.
The GOP leadership decided to act little more than 24 hours after Representative Jack Murtha, a hawkish Democrat with close ties to the military, said the time had come to pull out the troops. By forcing the issue to a vote, Republicans placed many Democrats in a politically unappealing position - whether to side with Murtha and expose themselves to attacks from the White House and congressional Republicans, or whether to oppose him and risk angering the voters that polls show want an end to the conflict.
Yesssss! This is precisely what Republicans on Capitol Hill needed after the craven el foldo pulled by Senate Pachyderms on Monday. In fact, it is what the latter could have done if they had simply defeated the Levin amendment without offering up the me-too Warner substitute. It is also exactly what I predicted when I said yesterday that Murtha's rant ran the risk of "making it exceedingly difficult for Republicans to remain in a position of supine 'compromise.'" It, once again, overplayed the Democrat hand, and instead of inducing the majority party to fold, GOPers have "called" instead (There's no way on Earth that Hastert would put Murtha's Full Bore Ricochet Panic amendment to a vote if its crushing wasn't a lead pipe cinch), and the Donks have nothing. Their neurotic defeatism fetish commands only tiny minority of public support, no matter what the ASSociated Press wants us to believe. Small wonder Crazy Nancy had nothing to say.
Here's a prediction: the Murtha proposal will garner well over three hundred "nay" votes. For all their contrivedly overheated rhetoric of recent days and weeks, those Jackasses not in safe seats are not about to live up to it and stampede straight over the political cliff. If House 'Pubbies can control their flight urge and not repeat the foolhardiness of their Senate counterparts, this latest beat-down of the National Suicide Caucus will provide the White House/GOP push-back on the war all the momentum it needs, as well as a fresh lesson on the need to look farther ahead than the next 24-hour news cycle (or the next bogus poll, whichever comes first).
Whether they make good use of that momentum is a wager above my pay grade and against my better judgment. But after this stomach-turning week, tonight's vote will be a hearteningly good start.
UPDATE II: Update I got destroyed when my PC spontaneously rebooted. It took me three f'ing hours to compose. I've never come so close to taking a baseball bat to the damned thing.
They say never to blog when you're pissed. Now I know what they mean.
F it all sideways. I'll try again tomorrow on a different machine that will hopefully f'ing work properly. If this piece of crap pulled this stunt again, I'd have a stroke.
I'm outta here.
UPDATE III: Screw tomorrow. I'm on my other machine, I'm still angry, and I'm going to do this update if it kills me.
UPDATE I: I'll never reproduce the quality, eloquence, and incendiary wit of the original, so this is the condensed version.
After several hours of frothing, frenzied futility characterized by this example of what might be called "speaking the truth to miserable, boorish, quisling swine," House Donks were unable to stop preliminary procedural approval of a final vote on the Murtha resolution. Then, per Crazy Nancy's cynical instructions and my prognostication above, the Democrats' craven, cowardly, despicable, "bare-lubed-ass-in-the-air" sedition was demolished by a margin of four hundred votes.
Call it political cut & run. The real vote was the first one to try and avoid being so publicly tied to their unconscionably defeatist rhetoric. They know Republicans had them dead to rights precisely because public opinion is not with their "party before country," "Bush is worse than bin Laden" crypto-treason. If Senate Republicans had mustered the balls to do the same thing to the Levin amendment on Monday minus a "cut & run lite" substitute, maybe this House "showdown" wouldn't have been necessary.
Nonetheless, it does spectacularly illustrate how easily the DisLoyal Opposition can be slapped down and how the Bush White House and congressional 'Pubbies can use their majority status to get their mojo back. But only if they stay engaged in the public relations fight. If today's exercise proves to be an aberration followed by a subsiding back into complacent, tone-deaf somnolence, it will have all been for naught.
In light of that, this story is an encouraging sign that the gloves may indeed stay off for a while.
[HT: Michelle Malkin]
posted by JASmius at 1:34 PM
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