This is a development that was seemingly easy enough to predict;
Senate Republicans who earlier this week helped block deliberations on a resolution opposing President Bush’s new troop deployments in Iraq changed course yesterday and vowed to use every tactic at their disposal to ensure a full and open debate.
In a letter distributed yesterday evening to Senate leaders, John W. Warner (Va.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and five other GOP supporters of the resolution threatened to attach their measure to any bill sent to the floor in the coming weeks. Noting that the war is the “most pressing issue of our time,” the senators declared: “We will explore all of our options under the Senate procedures and practices to ensure a full and open debate.”
If you were a fly on the wall in these Senator’s offices, you’d probably learn that they faced a firestorm of criticism from anti-war voters back home. Many of these Senators are up for re-election in 2008. They had perhaps lost some Republican support due to their war stance, but they had probably gained some independent and Democratic support in their own states as well.
News media coverage of the debate thwarted by the GOP Senate leadership was not kind to the Republican party. Most news stories talked about the GOP putting a lid on debate over the issues polls show is the number one issue most Americans are now concerned about. And so you had this:
The letter began circulating yesterday evening after it became apparent the Senate was deadlocked over the war resolution and Reid was prepared to move on to other matters. McConnell and many in his party have aggressively defended their decision to block the bipartisan resolution as an issue of fairness because Democrats would not agree to GOP procedural demands.
But some Republicans were uneasy about appearing to have stymied the debate. The letter appeared so suddenly that although it was addressed to Reid, the Democratic leader had not seen his copy before Warner read the text on the Senate floor.
“Monday’s procedural vote should not be interpreted as any lessening of our resolve to go forward advocating the concepts” of their resolution, the letter said. “The current stalemate is unacceptable to us and to the people of this country.”
Meanwhile, a top military official undermined one of the key talking points being used to try and squelch a resolution:
“There’s no doubt in my mind that the dialogue here in Washington strengthens our democracy. Period,” Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the House Armed Services Committee. He added that potential enemies may take some comfort from the rancor but said they “don’t have a clue how democracy works.”
But is it too little too late? And the Democrats would probably have more to gain politically if they just let the resolution from being block.
em>Prediction: from the standpoint of voters who opposes the war, the damage has been done to these 7 Senators who will likely face stiff re-election fights if Iraq is not resolved by 2008.
And although the administration seems to have dodged a bullet on a nonbinding Senate revolution, it still could be faced with one in the House:
But with the Senate at a standstill, House leaders are considering a straightforward resolution that opposes the troop increase, without the multiple provisions that complicated Warner’s text. Senior House Democrats predicted their measure will attract overwhelming party support and possibly as many as 30 GOP votes.
If that happens, it would put additional pressures on Senate Republicans.
But is that what happened? Steve Clemons writes that his sources tell him that the 7 Senators were horrified over a “nasty” partisan tug-of-war over the debate issue waged by the two parties’ Senate leadership:
I was as confused as anyone by the votes cast by Warner, Snowe and Hagel who were real stakeholders in the resolution that was being fought over. But it is now clear that in the eyes of these Senators, the Republican Party leadership and the majority Democrats chose to slug each other silly in ways that preempted any ability to secure the votes needed to assure debate. In that circumstance, the Senators who have signed the letter below decided to vote against the resolution in that climate.
Essentially, these seven Senators have said to their own Republican leadership and the Democrats to “shape up” or a “pox on both your houses.”
I think it’s a brave move — and explains a lot.
The problem: the average voter — particularly those who have questions about or do not support the war — won’t look at it that way. The voters (including those in those Senators’ states) may view it as an indication that the Senators’ anti-war rhetoric was just that and not distinguish their stance from that of the White House’s or the GOP leadership’s.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.