This could possibly be my last post on The Pledge, so please make a point to savor every word.

In one of my innumerable essays on the subject last week, I wrote that one of the premises of the pledge was our opinion that “the Republican Senators who will support the resolution will do so not out of any sort of conviction but due to political expediency.” I thought this was a rather inarguable point. The Senators who have had changes of heart regarding Iraq strategy have uniformly had them only after the November election results. You’ll note this categorization does not include Chuck Hagel who has been a grandstanding ninny on the topic since Iraq was a part of Mesopatamia.

Not all conservatives were convinced by this premise. My friend Paul at Powerline called it “weak” and further argued, “Many conservatives who aren't running for office have said that the surge is a bad idea. I have expressed my reservations about it. Thus, the law of averages tells us that, political calculation aside, there will be more than a few Republican Senators who have that belief.”

Without doing a headcount of the punditocracy, let’s first stipulate, as I’m sure Paul would agree, that such an exercise is unnecessary. While there will be the odd Peggy Noonan here and Bill Buckley there who will find themselves winning a strange new respect for opposing the administration’s plans, the vast majority of conservatives, both pundits and non-pundits alike, support the surge. Furthermore, the bulk of conservative grumbling about the plan that I’ve heard is that the surge isn’t big enough. Our Senatorial Caesars, military geniuses that they are, are attacking the surge from the opposite side of the problem, saying that there should be no surge at all and that we should be winding down our engagement in Iraq.

THE CRAZY KIDS AT THE DAILY KOS have actually done a us a helpful turn today, serving as de facto whip for the Warner Resolution. As of this afternoon, the Warner Resolution has five supporters. They are, John Warner, Susan Collins, Gordon Smith, Norm Coleman and Chuck Hagel. The first reader to name what all five of these Senators have in common wins a free corned beef sandwich from the Palm Beach Gardens Toojay’s (tax, gratuity and beverage not included).

Aw, forget it - it wouldn’t be fair to hold everyone in suspense while we wait for a contest winner so I’ll spill the beans now. Hold on to your seat, because you’re not going to believe it. All five of these Senators, these self-proclaimed prisoners of conscience, are up for reelection in ’08. What does the law of averages have to say about that?

The one thing that I remember from my three idle years in law school is the quaint Latin legal expression Res Ipsa Locquitur which translates into “the facts speak for themselves.” The fact that only Senators who are up for reelection in ’08 speaks volumes about what these guys (and gal) are up to. In the past, many of us have developed a fondness for John Warner and Norm Coleman. (Hagel, Collins and Smith have managed to serve without ever endearing themselves to conservatives or a significant number of their fellow Republicans.) But our past fondness for Warner and Coleman can’t obscure the reality of what they’re doing here.

THE ONLY SERIOUS ISSUE THAT REMAINS on the table is whether or not what they’re doing is a hanging offense. To my judgment, abandoning the troops at a time of war to pursue some vague political benefit would easily fall into that category. But that’s the great thing about democracies and freedom – everyone can make up their own mind. Almost 30,000 politically active and astute people have declared that they also think it’s a hanging offense and signed The Pledge. If some enterprising blogger wants to put up a Pledge letting Senators Warner, Coleman et al. that they’ll still have our support regardless of how they vote on these resolutions, I suggest they have at it. I bet N.Z. Bear would even help them get the effort off the ground. I also bet it will be pretty lonely over there.

Since these resolutions are at their heart little more than amoral political stunts, you’d think the Senators supporting them would realize that they’re going over like a collective lead balloon. But then again, if we’ve learned anything about some of our Republican Senators the last few years, it’s this – as weak and as pitiful as they are when it comes to understanding military tactics, they’re every bit as deficient when it comes to political tactics.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com