Pelosi's Triumph?
The title to the below article is “Rather” odd, to say the least. I know that Speaker Pelosi is reveling in her alleged victory but just what is that victory? As two very in-touch bloggers have stated on another blog I post to:
“Get it right, we blame the Dems for their votes on that stupid bill and they know they made a huge error. You see the Dem leaders have quagmired themselves in this whole war thing. Their anti-war fringe kooks are mad at them, and now every American that has even a 3rd cousin in uniform is mad at them. They have appeased themselves into a lose-lose situation at home and I for one am thrilled they have made such an enormous mess in such a short period of time.
Jimmy Carter must be so proud.”
“Hmmm, so let’s review. The military thinks Nancy is a phoney who can’t be trusted, “Code Pink” (et. al) thinks she is a phoney who can’t be trusted, any Republican with a brain knows she’s a phoney who can’t be trusted…let’s see that leaves the uninformed Dems who’d vote for anybody that is Dem (like the special interest groups etc.) and they’ll only vote if someone tells them to, like a union boss or a minister (or a $20 bill handed directly to the voter will do just fine too I guess).
Geesh great job Nancy of running the entire Democratic party into the ground in only 2 months.She gonna have a lotta splainin to do.”
What he learned was that the Democrats are all show and no go. We’ll pretend we support the troops by passing a bill that has no chance of the President signing, and then we can say we tried but that President just pulled the support right out from under you. As stated earlier, the troops know what is going on. And by the way, they vote too!And you guys just keep on making people angry who might not normally vote, and the results will be like last Satu rday’s rally in DC: Good Guys 30,000 — Traitors 5,000.
Posted by Cyber Pastor on Saturday, March 24, 2007 1:01 AM Reply
Alas! I digress…
An article was written and it was sent to me via email. I went to the link and sure enough, there it was. It explains what really happened with the 218 to 212 travesty…
‘A Triumph for Pelosi’
Wall Street JournalMarch 24, 2007; Page A10
That’s how the Associated Press described yesterday’s vote by the House to demand a U.S. retreat from Iraq, and in the perverse calculus of Capitol Hill we suppose it was. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has demonstrated she can pile on enough pork to bribe enough Democrats to cobble together a bare, partisan majority to “send a message” that has no chance of becoming law. Congratulations.
“Today is an historic day,” Ms. Pelosi said on the House floor. “The new Congress will vote to end the war in Iraq.” But of course the bill does nothing of the sort. If she truly wanted to end the war, the Speaker and her fellow Democrats could simply have used their power of the purse to refuse to fund it. But that would have meant taking some responsibility for what happens in Iraq, which is the last thing Democrats want to do. So they have passed a bill that funds the war while claiming it ends the war.
The bill’s “benchmarks” and deadlines certainly have nothing to do with achieving victory in Iraq, or assisting General David Petraeus’s campaign to secure Baghdad. They are all about the war inside the Democratic Caucus. On the one hand, they appease the antiwar left by pretending to declare the war illegal if certain goals aren’t met by Iraqis or U.S. forces. But on the other, they allow “moderates” from swing districts to claim they are nonetheless “supporting the troops.” Acts of Congress don’t get much more cynical than that.
This is not to say the vote won’t do considerable harm. It will be noted by our enemies in Iraq and will encourage them to inflict more casualties to further sour American support. It will make it harder for Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to disarm Shiite militias, who can point to the vote and say the Americans will soon be leaving. And most disgraceful, it will send a message to U.S. troops that they can fight on — albeit without much chance of success and without Congressional support.
The lengths that Democratic leaders had to go to win their “triumph” betrayed its cynicism. To get her narrow majority of 218 votes, Ms. Pelosi and Appropriations Chairman David Obey had to load it up like a farm bill: $74 million for peanut storage, $25 million for spinach growers, $283 million for dairy farmers — all told, some $20 billion in vote-buying earmarks of the kind Democrats campaigned against last year.
Even at that price, they could win over a mere two Republicans: antiwar Members Wayne Gilchrest of Maryland and Walter Jones of North Carolina. We hope GOP primary voters note those votes well. Given how the war hurt so many Republicans last November, this GOP solidarity is notable and a credit to the minority leadership.
President Bush was quick to denounce the vote yesterday, promising a veto. And we hope he keeps it up. By bowing to their antiwar left, Democrats are once again showing that they can’t be trusted on national security. The President should drive that message home until Congress gives him a clean war bill that gives our troops the money to fight our enemies without having to take orders from MoveOn.org.
Wall Street Journal On-Line with an alternate link.
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