{"id":9583,"date":"2007-01-11T09:45:11","date_gmt":"2007-01-11T14:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9583.html"},"modified":"2007-01-11T09:45:11","modified_gmt":"2007-01-11T14:45:11","slug":"fissures-come-to-the-fore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/fissures-come-to-the-fore\/","title":{"rendered":"Fissures come to the fore"},"content":{"rendered":"

The decisions made by the White House yesterday — before and during Bush’s national address — only solidified Democratic opposition to the president’s escalation strategy, but it’s worth remembering that Republicans are, with less and less hesitation, jumping ship<\/a>.<\/p>\n

President Bush’s plan to deploy more US troops to Iraq drew rebukes from a range of congressional Republicans yesterday, a break from the lock-step support for the war that the president has long enjoyed from members of his own party.<\/p>\n

A number of once-supportive Republican senators, including Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Sam Brownback of Kansas, and Gordon Smith of Oregon, went on record yesterday opposing an escalation in troop levels.<\/p>\n

“This is the president’s Hail Mary pass,” Smith said after the speech. “We are extending an ineffective tactic to further the status quo.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In addition to opposition from several Republican senators, seven rank-and-file GOP House members sent a letter to Bush yesterday, imploring him to reconsider his escalation strategy. Given the recent history of the House Republicans, this was rather unusual.<\/p>\n

It gets back to a point we talked about<\/a> yesterday. Congressional Dems, at least in the short term, seem to believe that dividing the GOP is the first step towards checking the White House’s policy. The key is making opposition to Bush policy bi-partisan.<\/p>\n

As the Boston Globe put it, “[I]f a sizeable number of Republicans join Democrats in opposing the president’s plan, Bush could find himself increasingly isolated as he pursues a strategy that the public is largely opposing.”<\/p>\n

So far, that’s exactly what’s been happening. Bush and his aides have been desperate to convince Republicans to stand behind him on Iraq, but fewer and fewer are willing to do so.
\n
\nRep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), an enthusiastic war supporter turned virulent critic, helped draft the seven-member letter. “This goes all the way back to four years ago, when the president told us we had to go to war over weapons of mass destruction,” Jones said. “I don’t think the president is listening.”<\/p>\n

Jones is hardly alone. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a soon-to-be presidential candidate, said<\/a> in a written statement issued from Baghdad, “I do not believe that sending more troops to Iraq is the answer. Iraq requires a political rather than a military solution.”<\/p>\n

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), another likely presidential contender, said there’s a gap between Bush’s rhetoric and the reality on the ground. “This is a dangerously wrong-headed strategy that will drive America deeper into an unwinnable swamp at a great cost,” Hagel said. “More American troops, treasure and casualties will not change this reality. It will make it worse.”<\/p>\n

Even Sen. John Warner, the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a strong White House ally, is distancing himself from the Bush policy.<\/p>\n

[Warner] said he will draft a resolution calling on Bush to increase troops only if he’s willing to endorse the major recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, which called for a major rethinking of the administration’s foreign policy.<\/p>\n

“Young men and women of US forces and coalition forces should not be caught in the crossfire of a civil war prompted by who should have succeeded Mohammed in — what is it? — 650 AD?” said Warner, a Virginia Republican.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The more Bush is isolated, the more likely it is the White House will embrace serious change. The president simply cannot execute a war opposed by the nation on based solely on the support of John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The decisions made by the White House yesterday — before and during Bush’s national address — only solidified Democratic opposition to the president’s escalation strategy, but it’s worth remembering that Republicans are, with less and less hesitation, jumping ship. President Bush’s plan to deploy more US troops to Iraq drew rebukes from a range of […]<\/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-9583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9583","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=9583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}