What A Week!

I feel your pain, Jim! I haven't been much help this week, I know. Trying to get two kids ready to move to college and keep up with my business is about to do me in.

I had to comment on James Carville, that vile copperhead, and his campaign for a bumpersticker slogan for the Democrats. Rush has a few suggestions:

Vote Early, Vote Often, Que Pasa
LBJ's Great Society: One More Decade Oughta Do It
Dumb it Down for Democrats in '08
We're Winning, Let's Quit
Democrat Victory Through Defeat of the United States

My favorite is "We're Winning, Let's Quit!"

On that subject, what is with Senator John Warner?

President Bush should start bringing home some troops by Christmas to show the Baghdad government that the U.S. commitment in Iraq is not open-ended, a prominent Republican senator said Thursday.

What a wonderful message that would send...to our enemies! What is this butthead thinking? Thank God Bush's resolve is as strong as ever. His speech to the VFW was inspired and took it right to the Democrats who want to compare Iraq with VietNam. He beat them at their own game, again. Good thing he's unmoveable on this subject, since he seems to have a bunch of milquetoast Republicans "behind" him.

JASmius adds: Warner is senile. He needs staffers to wipe the streamers of drool that are perpetually dangling from his quaffed chin. Like "the Baghdad government" has missed the anti-war antics of the Democrats for the past eight months, so let's make sure they know how badly we want to cut & run by actually kicking off the pell-mell retreat.

That's of a piece with Carl Levin's fulfillment of my prophecy of three weeks ago: they can't deny the military success of the President's "Surge" strategy, so let's crap on "the Baghdad government" and say it's been wasted on them. And the remedy? Cut & run.

Not if Freedom Watch and their fifteen million dollar ad campaign has anything to say about it. The Admiral thinks it's already had a, well, "pre-emptive" effect:

Now that their predictions of military failure have have died, the Democrats want to focus on the lack of political reform as a reason to leave. In January, they talked about how futile it was to play "whack-a-mole" when terrorists would simply move back and forth, and that the American and Iraqi forces could not clear and hold territory. Since that's been proven wrong, they now claim that the current Iraqi government cannot possibly institute the reforms Congress demands, such as oil revenue sharing and the forgiveness of former Ba'athists. Unless Iraq succeeds in these reforms as a sign of unity, we should withdraw, the argument will go.

That case appears weaker and weaker, however. Nouri al-Maliki has used the National Assembly recess to bypass his Shi'ite allies and start negotiations with Sunni tribal chiefs in Tikrit, the heart of Sunni resistance to his government. He negotiated cooperative agreements between the Kurds and the Shi'ite Islamic Council, the opponent of Maliki's former ally, Moqtada al-Sadr. Sadr's divisive influence has dramatically waned over the last few months - and that started with the surge in February, when Sadr hotfooted it to Iran.

Will the Democrats demand on withdrawal and the catastrophic collapse that will follow, simply to defend the job rights of former Saddam Hussein apparatchiks and the division of oil profits?

Of course they will. Or perhaps that should be, "Of course they WOULD" - if they thought there was any possibility of luring the usual RINO lackeys with them to provide "bipartisan" cover. Sounds like John Warner would be in tow, but somehow I don't think that would be enough to trigger another craven elephant stampede. And without that figleaf, the Donks probably won't
take that chance.

Why? Because they like being the majority again, and while the nutroots who will howl anew in frothing outrage at this latest betrayal, power ultimately trumps extremist orthodoxy. A cold reality that the nutters themselves will eventually come to realize, lest they be shut out of the feeding frenzy altogether.

That and the fact that once President Rodham is calling the shots with overwhelming congressional majorities behind her, she'll pull the plug on the entire war in about fifteen seconds.

Patience is not one of the fever swamp's virtues. But it's not as though they'll ever run out of bile - or the lung power to deliver it.

Don't believe me? Wait 'till we get to their reaction to the President's Wednesday speech at the VFW convention. With all due respect to S'Mores The Wonder Kitty (sidebar pic coming soon), they're having kittens about that.