{"id":7251,"date":"2006-04-27T09:48:06","date_gmt":"2006-04-27T13:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7251"},"modified":"2006-04-27T09:48:06","modified_gmt":"2006-04-27T13:48:06","slug":"house-will-host-lengthy-debate-on-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/house-will-host-lengthy-debate-on-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"House will host lengthy debate on Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"

A month ago, Republican Reps. [tag]Walter Jones[\/tag] Jr. (N.C.), [tag]Ron Paul[\/tag] (Texas) and [tag]Wayne Gilchrest[\/tag] (Md.) joined Democratic Reps. [tag]Neil Abercrombie[\/tag] (Hawaii), [tag]Ike Skelton[\/tag] (Mo.) and [tag]Marty Meehan[\/tag] (Mass.) in co-signing a “Dear Colleague” letter calling for “an open and honest [tag]debate[\/tag]<\/a> on the future of U.S. policy in [tag]Iraq[\/tag].” Specifically, the bi-partisan group wanted 17 hours of debate on the House floor on whether lawmakers believe Bush should “develop and implement a plan for the withdrawal” of the [tag]troops[\/tag].<\/p>\n

In a surprising move, it looks like these six will get pretty much what they asked for<\/a>.<\/p>\n

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told Republican colleagues yesterday that they will have a full and lengthy floor debate on the Iraq war, a dramatic change of course for GOP leaders who had previously resisted Republican and Democratic calls for such a debate.<\/p>\n

Four House Republicans have signed a Democratic-sponsored discharge petition that would begin 17 hours of debate over Iraq on the House floor. The Republicans signed on because GOP leaders had ignored their requests for a debate, said Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), one of the four mavericks.<\/p>\n

Boehner told colleagues about his plan for debate on Iraq yesterday morning during a closed-door meeting of the Republican Conference that was mostly devoted to discussing soaring gas prices. Boehner’s remarks, which were unexpected, caused a hush to fall over the audience, said Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.), who attended the meeting and is one of the four GOP signatories to the Democratic discharge petition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A “hush to fall over the audience” because the number of lawmakers in the Republican Conference who welcome this debate is exceedingly small. Most of them want to express their support for the war — but few of them want to explain why<\/i> in a high-profile debate.<\/p>\n

To be sure, Boehner said the debate would not be exactly what the bi-partisan group requested, and the House will instead consider a resolution produced by the Republican-controlled House International Relations Committee.<\/p>\n

Still, it sets up an interesting challenge. Will House Republicans, in an election year, defend a war most Americans consider a tragic mistake? How willingly will they join the rest of the country in criticizing Bush’s handling of the war? How many House Republicans will mysteriously need to be in their home districts during this floor debate?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A month ago, Republican Reps. [tag]Walter Jones[\/tag] Jr. (N.C.), [tag]Ron Paul[\/tag] (Texas) and [tag]Wayne Gilchrest[\/tag] (Md.) joined Democratic Reps. [tag]Neil Abercrombie[\/tag] (Hawaii), [tag]Ike Skelton[\/tag] (Mo.) and [tag]Marty Meehan[\/tag] (Mass.) in co-signing a “Dear Colleague” letter calling for “an open and honest [tag]debate[\/tag] on the future of U.S. policy in [tag]Iraq[\/tag].” Specifically, the bi-partisan group wanted […]<\/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-7251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7251","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=7251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}