{"id":11476,"date":"2007-07-16T15:00:40","date_gmt":"2007-07-16T19:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/11476.html"},"modified":"2007-07-16T15:00:40","modified_gmt":"2007-07-16T19:00:40","slug":"still-waiting-for-the-fur-to-start-flying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/still-waiting-for-the-fur-to-start-flying\/","title":{"rendered":"Still waiting for the ‘fur to start flying’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh great, another Republican senator is warning the White House<\/a> about the caucus being this close<\/i> to bolting with Bush on Iraq.<\/p>\n

…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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

In private, Voinovich is more blunt, using a profanity to describe the White House’s handling of Iraq by charging the administration “f\u2014ed up” the war.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

Is it me, or are these veiled threats getting rather tiresome?
\n
\nEvery 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.<\/p>\n

Even Voinovich, the one who reportedly believes Bush “f\u2014ed 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<\/a>, of course.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}