Thinking outside the Beltway Box: Isn’t it about time to retire to the old-time, smoke-filled back room and wrap up this Iraq thing?
Here’s my thought. Dems need a few good Repugs to back them up in the Senate against the Prez because they are too chicken to just block all the funding bills for the war on their own initiative. How to get the Repugs to come over and help out?
Well, off to the legendary smoke-filled room where deals are made. Invite the Repugs who are wavering about the war, especially those who face a re-election challenge in 2008, and even more especially those from areas where rage against the invasion of illegal aliens is maximal.
A-ha! Now the plan becomes more evident. A clear and straight-forward deal to be made (secretly of course) that the Repugs will trade their “pull out of Iraq” support to the Dems for a Dem promise to back all the “close the border, go after bad employers” bills, but at the same time drop all efforts toward amnesty for illegals and all attempts to increase the number of temporary foreign workers (such as H-1B, etc.) for now and for the duration of each Senator’s service.
Voila! Two problems solved and the Dems are lookin good for 2008. The soldiers come home and the Dems get some credit for beating G.W. out of his war; plus the border starts closing down faster and the amnesty argument (which is sure to hurt the Dems in 2008) is gone.
But I guess this would be too easy…
This isn’t going to work. The Big Business Republicans are actually in favor of lax immigration rules and increases in temporary foreign workers. Most likely, Republicans would just get a compromise that didn’t force a withdrawal and only cosmetically addressed immigration, and they would claim credit for both.
The republicans aren’t going to compromise and the democrats know it. The solution for the democrats would be to offer Bush the 200 billion with a firm withdrawal date. They need to offer the money up front and then beg Bush not to leave the troops without funding. If they don’t do this now, the war will go on forever. It will be framed as fighting terrorism, but we will be in Iraq for a decade. We really are at a turning point in the war. On one side we have the potential to start ending it now. On the other the prospect of staying until 2009, and then watchingit dumped into democrats laps. If that happens the democrats won’t end it, because doing so would place republicans in the position of blaming the predictably messy aftermath on them. That would make it appear that the entire war was a failure because of democratic leadership. If they democrats don’t have the courage to use the purse strings now because of the political reprecussions, what would lead us to believe they would face the political consequences of appearing to have lost the war once all the power was in their hands? So the only choice democrats have now is to end the war with the purse strings, or back Bush’s war without end.