It Ain’t The 60’s Anymore Toto

This is a Michelle Malkin Hat-Tip that not only led to this video but a really good article as well. I will post them here for the serious reader, like myself…. Enjoy.

Between Iraq and a Hard Place

Antiwar liberals endanger the Pelosi Democrats.

BY KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Friday, March 9, 2007

The meltdown among House Democrats over Iraq is rightly being described as the first big test of Nancy Pelosi's leadership. It's also an early example of just how much political damage the antiwar left is capable of inflicting on their new speaker.

Ms. Pelosi has been backed into a tight corner over President Bush's $100 billion request for war funding. Hoping to quell a revolt from a liberal bloc that wants out of Iraq, pronto, the speaker unveiled a new, new plan yesterday that includes a timetable for withdrawal--to begin as early as July. Ms. Pelosi needs to win this vote, the first real showdown over Iraq. But it's becoming increasingly clear she can do that only by sacrificing her moderate wing, which opposes her plan and could pay heavily for it in next year's election.

Talk about a downward spiral from just a few weeks ago, when Ms. Pelosi stepped in to save Senate Democrats from their own Iraq irresolution. Ms. Pelosi's own approach was politically clever, if nothing else. The House resolution criticized the troop buildup, making Congress look as if it were taking a stand against President Bush--even if it had no binding force. Yet it also contained a sop about the "bravery" of those troops and vows of "support," words designed to coax war-weary Republicans into joining with Democrats. Republican leaders were privately admitting they were beat, and even the White House was bracing for as many as 70 GOP defections.

Had Ms. Pelosi served up that vote quick, she may have presided over a stinging bipartisan rebuke to the administration's troop buildup and gained some breathing room. Instead, Madame Speaker gave into the lure of a Bush-bashing event, stretching the resolution "debate" over a week. That delay was more than enough time for her liberal base to get beyond her control.

Or rather it was enough time for Pennsylvania antiwar vet John Murtha to wrest the debate away from Ms. Pelosi and let the faithful know what they could expect under his sway. As the House debate got rolling, Mr. Murtha crowed to a liberal blog that the non-binding resolution was just the "first step" in cutting off funding for the troops. He also laid out his strategy for avoiding accusations that Democrats were abandoning soldiers in the field. Instead of just cutting off the money, his party would create new backdoor "readiness" standards that the administration would be unable to meet. In one fell interview, Mr. Murtha put Ms. Pelosi in a box.

Republicans who might have been tempted to vote for the resolution thought better of signing up for Mr. Murtha's "slow bleed." Only 17 jumped ship on the resolution vote, far fewer than even the giddiest White House official might have hoped. What might have been seen as a Congress-wide rebuke of Mr. Bush fizzled into a party-line vote by the opposition. Poof went a key Pelosi victory.

Mr. Murtha managed to do much more than just unite Republicans--he blew apart his own party just as it turned to the war supplemental. The sizable Blue Dog and moderate wing might have been willing to stick with their leadership on a non-binding resolution, but made clear they couldn't vote for anything the public might perceive as cutting off troop funding. Some, such as Blue Dog leader Allen Boyd went further, voicing wariness of any bill that micromanaged the war.

Many of these moderates were the key to Ms. Pelosi's electoral victory last year, as she well knows. More than a few eked out wins in conservative districts because of their promises to approach Iraq as adults. And most have spent recent weeks reminding their leadership that if they are forced to walk the plank on an out-of-Iraq vote, they are in fact being forced to walk the plank in next year's election. In other words, poof might go Ms. Pelosi's majority.

By last week, Ms. Pelosi showed signs of bowing to intelligent thought and cleansing the supplemental of Iraq poison pills. But her antiwar wing once again wasn't in a bowing mood. Mr. Murtha had, after all, promised them red meat, and a clean supplemental was merely tofu. The cofounders of the 70-strong Out of Iraq Caucus, including the never-sensible Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee, declared their whole contingent would bolt unless the bill brought the war to an end. Without them, Ms. Pelosi would only be able to pass a war-funding bill by teaming up with Republicans and Blue Dogs to defeat her own base. Which would hardly count in Ms. Pelosi's mind as a victory.

Her withdrawal plan of yesterday was therefore a capitulation to her liberal bloc. And the only folks truly delighted were Republicans. Minority leader John Boehner has had good reason to worry about the political consequences of his party voting down its own president's request for war funding. By yesterday afternoon, the GOP had declared the new Pelosi plan a troop funding cutoff that equaled "retreat" and felt confident they could lay a supplemental defeat at the door of the Democrats. Mr. Bush jumped in with cover for the shakier elements of his party by promising a veto.

The message to Ms. Pelosi is that she'll have to cobble together a victory from within her own party. Toward that end, she and appropriations chief David Obey have already turned to good-old-fashioned bribery. There is talk that the $100 billion "war" supplemental will include an extra $20 billion in goodies. At least $4 billion would be emergency agriculture spending aimed at Blue Dog southerners for their struggling farmers back home. A huge dollop would go to children's heath care, Katrina and homeland security. And to provide further coverage against accusations that Democrats don't support the troops, there's billions more for veterans and troop health care. So much for Ms. Pelosi's promise of fiscal discipline.

The joke is that even if Ms. Pelosi can buy the moderate wing to her side, her proposal still might go . . . poof. And why? Her liberal wing, of course. After all the speaker's concessions, antiwar critics were still griping yesterday that the withdrawal proposal left Mr. Bush too much flexibility over the timing. Reps. Lynn Woolsey and Ms. Lee introduced their own amendment to the legislation that would demand a complete withdrawal by year-end. Ms. Pelosi is loath to give them a vote, since the amendment would surely fail and allow Mr. Bush to note that even Congress is against withdrawal. The question is if her liberals will give her any choice. They certainly haven't up to now.

Ms. Strassel is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, based in Washington. Her column appears Fridays.