Congressional Democrats are doing an end zone victory dance over their passage of Iraq funding legislation which includes specific dates for withdrawing the troops.
In the House, the Conference Report for HR 1591 passed by 218-208. In the Senate it passed 51-46. Two Republicans - Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gordon Smith of Oregon were the only Republicans to vote with the Democrats.
SIDEBAR
For a brief (and probably incorrect) discussion of "Conference Reports" go to the Secret Decoder Ring page.
END SIDEBAR
The problem for the Democrats (who have slightly re-written history to have us all believe that the 2006 elections were all and only about Iraq) is this: The hard Left of the country wants the US out of Iraq now, not in October of 2008 and not in August of 2510. Now.
When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) says the war in Iraq is already lost, the MoveOn.Org wing of the Democratic party wants to know why the Democrats are voting to spend any additional money on Iraq - with or without strings.
The New Republic - a well-respected, if leftist, journal - discussed this conundrum in a piece about the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin (D-Mich), a Liberal Democrat. He went to Ann Arbor, the home of the University of Michigan also not a hotbed of centrism.
Levin goes to Ann Arbor and gets … booed. Not only are the demonstrators against the war, but they are ugly, anti-Semitic demonstrators holding up signs which say, "AIPAC Owns Levin" a reference to the American-Israeli Political Action Committee.
According to Eve Fairbanks' piece in TNR:
"In April, Levin [had] insisted 'we're not going to vote to cut funding, period' and that Democrats would ultimately have to strip the withdrawal timetable - precious to war opponents - from the supplemental budget."
SIDEBAR II
Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson musta been busy because I haven't seen any coverage of them leading counter-demonstrations against anti-Semitism at U. Mich.
END SIDEBAR II
Continued... |