Still waiting for the ‘fur to start flying’

July 16, 2007

Oh great, another Republican senator is warning the White House about the caucus being this close to bolting with Bush on Iraq.

…Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, told CNN that he warned Rove last week that “The president is a young man and should think about his legacy.”

He should know history will not be kind unless he can come up with a plan that protects the troops and stabilizes the region,” Voinovich said he told Karl Rove, whom Bush dubbed “the architect” of his 2004 re-election.

Voinovich added that other Republicans are close to speaking out against the President’s current strategy. “I won’t mention anyone’s name. But I have every reason to believe that the fur is going to start to fly, perhaps sooner than what they may have wanted.”

In private, Voinovich is more blunt, using a profanity to describe the White House’s handling of Iraq by charging the administration “f—ed up” the war.

With CNN, Voinovich added that he believes Bush and his team “understand” the situation, adding, “We’ll see by September what they put together. But the main thing is were running out of time — we should take advantage of this time.” He reportedly warned the White House that he will endorse a Democratic plan mandating a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days unless there’s a “dramatic new strategy ready to be unveiled in the fall.”

Is it me, or are these veiled threats getting rather tiresome?

Every few weeks, Senate Republicans tell reporters how really, truly frustrated they are, and how they really, truly want to help change the policy. Then it’s time to vote — and their bravado means about as much as a FOIA request in Dick Cheney’s office.

Even Voinovich, the one who reportedly believes Bush “f—ed up” Iraq, talks a good game, but how’d he vote on Sen. Jim Webb’s amendment to provide more rest to members of the Armed Forces deployed overseas? Against it, of course.

Lugar, Voinovich, Domenici, Warner, and others are concerned about the policy. Terrific. They want to “encourage” Bush to change course. Fine. They “unsatisfied” with the status quo. Mazel tov.

But the sooner they stop talking and start acting, the sooner Americans can take their words seriously. The “fur is going to start to fly”? Maybe the senator can wake us when they’re ready.

Shorter GOP Senate: “One of these days, Alice. Pow! Right in the kisser!”

  • Maybe if you and Kevin Drum switch from friday catblogging to everyday cat blogging then the fur will start flying.

  • What’s sad about this whole commentary from Voinovich is the reason he is providing Bush for the change in course. It’s not that we went into Iraq under false pretenses or that over 3,500 soldiers have been killed and another 29,000 wounded, or that he has created a fucking quagmire. No, the Decider Guy should rethink this strategy to save his legacy! WTF?

    But, I guess since Dubya is so self-absorbed this might be the only way to get through to him.

  • Dear Voinovich, my Senator.

    We’re calling your bluff. Go buy some coffee, because you are going to need it.

  • Forgive me for playing politics but

    Is it not far better for the Democrats if the Republicans stick together and keep Iraq as a mess for the next 16 months?

    If the Democrats force the President to do anything then the Democrats will be accused of losing Iraq. Look at history. Even in Germany, the right-wing sucessfully accused the left of stabbing the army in the back in WWI. In Viet Nam, it was a lost cause when the Democrats and a huge majority of the country finally brought an end to the insanity. In Korea, Eisenhower signed an armistice that Truman never could have signed.

    I just don’t see how the left won’t get blamed if the left has any fingerprints at all on the war in Iraq.

  • Tainted War (sung to the tune of Tainted Love)

    (As sung by a non diaper wearing Rep Senator)
    Sometimes I feel I’ve got to
    Run away I’ve got to
    Get away
    From the tank you drive into the heart of me
    The war we share
    Seems to go nowhere
    And I’ve seen the polls
    For I toss and turn I can’t sleep at night

    Once I ran to you (I ran)
    Now I’ll run from you
    This tainted war you’ve given
    I gave you all an R could give you
    Take my votes and that’s not nearly all
    Oh…tainted War
    Tainted War

    Now I know I’ve got to
    Run away I’ve got to
    Get away
    I don’t really want that war from you
    To make things right
    I need someone to blame on sight
    And you think war is a game
    But I’m sorry I don’t play that way

    Once I ran to you (I ran)
    Now I’ll run from you
    This tainted war you’ve given
    I gave you all an R could give you
    Take my votes and that’s not nearly all
    Oh…tainted war
    Tainted war

    (Final Chorus as sung by the American People)
    Don’t tell us please
    We cannot stand the way you tease
    We ignore you cause you hurt us so
    Now we’re gonna take our votes and stop
    Tainted war, tainted war (x2)
    Stop it fools, tainted war (x2)
    Tainted war (x3)

  • Thanks for passing the great news Ohioan. I imagine a number of DC escort services will see a spate of cancelled appointments.

    I wonder how the ReThugs will respond? My money’s on calling Reid’s move sleep deprivation and pointing out the hypocrisy of Democrats who called such treatment torture when it is done to “terrists.”

  • neil at #7:

    As much as I want a Democrat in the WH and a solid majority of Dems in the Congress, I cannot, in good conscience, use the blood of American troops to attain it. These are lives we are talking about – we are not playing with them for political gain. That’s what separates us from those who claim they support the troops, but who fail to properly equip them and fail to give them the rest they need, and who deploy and deploy and deploy. We are supposed to be better than that, and it’s what we have been fighting for from Day One.

    Please realize that you just said it would be better for more families to attend funerals and spend time in hospitals so that we can take the WH. This is as bad – or worse – that the president accepting death and injury of American troops to spare his ego the blow of admitting he screwed it all up.

  • I love seeing the authoritarian cult feebly fight to free themselves from their self-imposed shackles. You have the rubes blindly following dear leader with that knee-jerk head-burrying they have bred into them so the foot soldiers can pivot on a dime at the whim and vascillating needs of the powers-that-be. But what happens when dear leader is a self-interested idiot who has no compunction about sacrificing the party for his own selfish ends?

    My friends, here is our wedge issue: make them choose between fealty to an imagined utopia and the reality that is destroying them.

    It’s difficult to know which they’d choose, but if I were a betting man, I’d say the band plays on…

  • Remember the Looney Tune when the little baby chicken hawk hopped around and told Rooster Foghorn Leghorn to put up his dukes? That’s what these Senators look like trying to stand up to their prophet.

  • Neil and Anne (and everyone else): the GOP *will* blame Democrats for “losing” the Iraq War, whether or not we do or did anything to deserve such blame, and the media will help them slur us for such imaginary sins (what, like the GOP and media that got us into this war are going to blame anyone responsible, like *themselves*?).

    Nobody should expect anything else from Republicans. It’s what they do: fuck things up, then blame their opponents. Nobody should expect anything else from the media. It’s what they do: repeat Republican bullshit, and see how we react.

    I’m not sure what to expect from Democrats.

  • Oh, and if Voinovich wants to sound like anything other than an impotent old man trying to avoid his share of the blame for America’s latest and greatest clusterfuck, starring The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (except at its own troops), he can put his money where his fucking mouth is and start voting with Democrats who are trying to stop Bush.

  • All the more reason to start hammering the term “occupation” into the consciousness of the American people. As someone said, you don’t lose and occupation – you just end it.

    The beauty of it is that calling it an occupation is calling it what it is, and the more truth we can inject into the debate, the easier it is to make the decision to bring the forces home.

  • We’ve got to stop being so damned defensive and paranoid. Worrying what the GOP scum might to us under any and all conditions isn’t productive.

    Our best strategy is to put impeachment back on the table. I know we don’t have the Senate votes to convict. We probably don’t even have the House votes to impeach. But the 17 months of HEARINGS alone — carefully documenting all the GOP treason, bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors — would do wonders for our cause on so many levels. And there’s nothing the GOP or the Shrub can do about it.

    Why is that so hard for Reid and Pelosi to grasp?

    While I’m at it, why can’t they grasp the fact that 40 Democratic senators could end the Iraq invasion by announcing their intention to block any further funding for it?

  • My comment re: Anne #10 (re: neil’s post #7):

    First, Dems should continue to press for an immediate end to the war. But we MUST beware the Republicans who “switch sides”. the GOP is looking at an extinction event and we should keep the larger issues in mind as they try to avoid their date with death.

    The number of Americans who have died and will die in Iraq is nothing compared to the number who have died and will die because of Republican policies. 18,000 people die every year because they have no health insurance. Many many more die from pollution. And global warming will make smoking look like a minor health issue.

    The GOP currently has the power to block fixes to these problems. They would normally keep the 40% of the Senate they’d need to block the changes we MUST accomplish. But Iraq has changed the dynamic…

    If it takes a war to kill off the GOP for a while and have another New Deal, then I guess that’s what it takes. I wish it didn’t. But the fact is that Americans are so misinformed/ignorant/apathetic that they would rather watch American Idol than participate in a discussion about how they’re being killed in droves by the Republicans and their corporate benefactors.

    It sounds horrible, but we had to have a depression to get the New Deal. This time we had to have a war in Iraq. Iraq is a Republican war, and it must remain so. It should be the rock inside the bag that the GOP will be trapped in, going into the river of 2008.

    Many in the GOP will try to make “bipartisan” moves to “change course”, but what they’ll really be doing is trying to get Dems to own the war. If they succeed in making this a bipartisan war, there will be many many more deaths than if they fail. If Dems miss this chance to kill off the GOP for awhile, we may not get another for a long time. Is this playing politics? No. It’s using the political backlash against one disaster to avoid many others. The soldiers who die do so for their country. Those who are unwilling to risk lives for a greater purpose do not understand that individuals cannot be worth more than the society they come from.

  • Racer – everything you say is valid – I just cringed at the notion of “hoping” Iraq stays a mess so we can benefit at the voting booth. There’s no reason to actively hope for such a thing, not when we can actively work to end the occupation.

    Almost from the beginning, we have been treated to a broken record of “So, what’s the Dems’ plan…the Dems have no plan…so, what’s the plan?” even as we offered one plan after another. We might as well have been speaking into a void, for all the action that resulted.

    But there has been no shortage of Democratic ideas – that they have been drowned out in the noise from the WH and right-wing media doesn’t negate them. And by continuing the loop of, “so, what’s your plan?” the GOP has been able to perpetuate the notion that we haven’t had any.

    The GOP will pay, and dearly, for their failures to address the mess that Bush created – and while it is time for big changes in leadership and vision – changes I hope are coming – my joy at the change will be tempered with the knowledge that it was paid for with a lot of other people’s pain and misery, and that I take no joy in.

    The soldiers who die may be willing to make that sacrifice, but it is up to us to make sure their sacrifice is worthy of the mission, since our leaders have failed them and failed us on that score. That failure will be used to political advantage, no question, I’m just not hoping for more death and more injury, so that we have the advantage.

    Not sure I’m making sense, and may be going in circles, but I hope you know where I’m coming from on this.

  • We should keep trying to end the war and I hate that troops are dying needlessly, but it just isn’t going to end until Republicans get on board and/or on massive civic protests happen, or Democrats get the presidency.

    Therefore, keep putting up bills to end the occupation, while people like Voinovich talk against the occupation but vote to prolong it, or while Bush vetoes the bills. That would make the least hawkish Republicans look incompetent and two-faced, and would firmly tie all the Republicans to the ongoing occupation. Either Republican support will crack, or we’ll get a much larger majority in 2008. I’d take either outcome.

  • Voinovich and all the rest seem to be begging Bush to save their assets by asking for a change of strategy. They can’t really break with him because he’s a Repub, but they’re being hurt by his Iraq policies.

    FLASH: There IS NO SOLUTION that Bush can come up with to save you now. You should have known that back when you all were waving the flag and backing this stupid war to begin with. This is what your conservative ideology hath wrought. We wouldn’t be in this mess if your friends hadn’t put party before country.

    If you want a way out, you’re going to have to find it yourself. You can start by working to end the obstruction in the Senate by your fellow Republicans. Better yet, you can admit that modern conservatism is bankrupt and unworkable, and abandon it.

    Now that would be some fur flying.

  • Senator Voinovich’s voting record on military issues can be found at: Senator Voinovich’s Voting Record

    Senator Voinovich’s history of speeches on the Iraq war can be found at: Senator Voinovich’s Record of Speeches

    Senator Voinovich’s ratings from special interest groups on military issues can be found at: Senator Voinovich’s Interest Group Ratings

    For more information on Senator Voinovich’s position on military issues please visit Project Vote Smart or call our hotline at 1-888-VOTE-SMART.

  • You’ll see “the fur flying” when – and only when – Republicans accept that there is no chance of winning in Iraq. As long as there’s the slightest chance, as long as there’s a General willing to blow smoke up their asses and they’re willing to believe – as long as the ghost of hope remains alive that one day the United States might have its hand on the spigot of Iraq’s huge oil reserves, they’ll continue to back Bush and obstruct Congress.

    Obviously, they haven’t reached that realization yet, and consequently must believe that such hope still exists. I can’t believe even the morally bankrupt Republicans could continue to send other men’s sons into the meat grinder to die for a cause they know is hopeless.

  • no, steve

    it’s not you.

    this is a combination of

    – republican senators trying to save their ass

    and

    – republican senators trying not to offend the pure republican vote

    and

    – republican senators trying to con independents and democrats into thinking they are concerned about the iraq occupation,

    when, in fact,

    they are really concerned about

    – appearing to be concerned

    and

    – being re-elected.

    that’s all.

    there is nothing more to this message from voinavitch or smith or snowe, or sunnunu, et al.

    there really is something missing in these republican senators

    minds and hearts;

    they do not deserve the honor of serving the american people.

    • Comments are closed.