Congressional Republicans Taste the Bullet

Republicans on Capital Hill aren't exactly biting the bullet on the war in Iraq, but they are giving it a little taste. Yesterday, it was Sen. Richard Lugar from Indiana announcing that the surge policy wasn't working. Today, George Voinovich called for a change in direction in Iraq. At the same time, neither senator promised to start voting with the Democrats to either defund the war or set a timetable for withdrawal.

President Bush would call these kinds of announcements "meaningless political theater." I call it begging the president to save them from political disaster. But I'm not sure there is much of an alternative to going over the cliff with the president. If Bush does admit defeat and begins to draw down American troop levels, it's not going to help the Republicans. Democrats and liberal bloggers like myself are going to ask why Bush wasted another 500-600 American lives on the fruitless surge policy that was destined for failure and why Republican senators supported Bush despite all their "misgivings" about the policy. And we'll be right to ask.

And the answers won't be easy because Senate Republicans won't want to say the truth--that they supported the President because they didn't want to give in to the Democrats. Talk about a hell of a reason for hundreds of American troops to lose their lives. The Iraq war has been driven by Republican politics from the very beginning. Staying another nine months to avoid losing to the Democrats would be the icing on the whole cake of mendaciousness and deceit.

Supporting President Bush means losing considerably more political ground in 2008. It's likely however, that giving up their support for the President would result in a much sharper Republican collapse. As a result, it's no surprise that the GOP is only tasting the bullet.