Ed Kilgore: The War Within the GOP

[babylonsister]

http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2007/07/the_war_within_the_gop.php

The War Within the GOP
Ed Kilgore


After months and months of obsessive MSM and blogger attention to arguments within the Democratic Party about every detail of an Iraq withdrawal strategy, it's refreshing this week to see some ink about Republican divisions as well.

You can make the argument, of course, that these divisons have no practical import: an assortment of Republican senators, especially those up for re-election next year, are itching to get their names attached to some sort of resolution that demands a change of strategy in Iraq, without doing anything real to force it.

But on another level, there's a growing gap in Republican rhetoric on Iraq between those who are unhappy with Bush for failing to escalate our military involvement even more, and those who are at least willing to concede it's time to prepare for withdrawal. Moreover, the GOP's Iraq "hawks," from Bush on down, are beginning to say things in defense of their position that are, well, a bit crazy.

snip//

Meanwhile, adding to the Republican disarray, the president himself, on the eve of an official interim report on Iraq, made a speech in which he said, after expressing an openness to different options: "Yes, we can accomplish this fight and win in Iraq. And secondly, I want to tell you, we must." Since every viable option for a changed strategy in Iraq involves an admission that a "win" in Iraq is simply delusional, Bush is clearly rejecting, in advance, and for the umpteenth time, any hortatory advice from Congress.

So there you have it: GOP opinion on Iraq runs the gamut from self-consciously toothless efforts to distance vulnerable Republicans from Bush's policies, to lunatic arguments that we're about to hand Baghdad over to Osama bin Laden, to fatuous Vietnam-era analogies.

Democrats would be wise to take a few days off from debating their own relatively minor differences of opinion on Iraq and let the American people hear, loud and clear, the GOP's "wisdom" on the subject. Democrats might also begin to hammer home the obvious point that Bush and his allies are paving the way for a major al-Qaeda propaganda victory by screaming from the rooftops that the inevitable U.S. withdrawal will be the worst U.S. setback since the British burned Washington during the War of 1812.

[libodem]

1. It's taken long enough

Do these people have consciences? Any of them? Aren't they supposed to be the religious ones? Maybe that's what allows them to have such a huge cognitive dissonance operating between their ears. At lest some of them have taken the first steps to apostasy and have begun to question the party dogma. Pathetic creatures. Oh, well there is comfort at the local brothel.

[katty]

2. they can't withstand the tide of the pressure anymore