{"id":5902,"date":"2005-11-22T10:47:45","date_gmt":"2005-11-22T15:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5902"},"modified":"2005-11-22T10:47:45","modified_gmt":"2005-11-22T15:47:45","slug":"repeating-fridays-fiasco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/repeating-fridays-fiasco\/","title":{"rendered":"Repeating Friday’s fiasco"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a year filled with embarrassing, often shameful, congressional theatrics, last Friday’s “debate” on withdrawal from Iraq was among the more disturbing. Apparently, we may see a repeat soon.<\/p>\n

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) called for a redeployment<\/a> of U.S. troops in Iraq, prompting the GOP to pull a little stunt. House Republicans unveiled a one-sentence<\/a> mischaracterization<\/a> of Murtha’s position, apparently to set a trap for House Democrats — vote against Murtha or for withdrawal. It was a cynical stunt, Democrats saw through it easily, and the entire fiasco produced little more than news accounts about Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) calling Murtha a “coward<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

The odd thing is that those same House Republicans seem to look at the debacle as a success. Indeed, they seem almost anxious to do the whole thing all over again<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Republican who initiated last week’s overwhelming House vote to keep U.S. troops in Iraq said he will do it again if Democrats don’t cease their calls for withdrawal.<\/p>\n

“If they start this again, we’ll call the vote again,” said Rep. J.D. Hayworth, Arizona Republican, whom members credited with suggesting holding a vote. “As far as I’m concerned, if they haven’t learned from this, if they go back to this cheap talk, I would be more than happy to call for another vote.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s as if House Republicans will do anything to avoid a substantive debate over the future of the war, even if that means repeating the same petty partisan games over and over again. Shameless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a year filled with embarrassing, often shameful, congressional theatrics, last Friday’s “debate” on withdrawal from Iraq was among the more disturbing. Apparently, we may see a repeat soon. Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) called for a redeployment of U.S. troops in Iraq, prompting the GOP to pull a little stunt. House Republicans unveiled a one-sentence […]<\/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-5902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5902","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=5902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}