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DEMS AGAINST THE SURGE. Straightforward stuff from the Democratic leadership, preemptively saying "no" to Iraq surge plans from the president. This brought me back to the New York Times piece from yesterday hyping "division within the party" regarding a troops surge plan. The piece didn't really have the goods: The one Democratic senator quoted saying he was potentially open to a temporary surge -- the staunchly non-wanky Carl Levin -- made it clear in his statement that any surge plan had to be contingent on a permanent troop reduction beginning in four to six months, something Bush is not going to propose. This portion of the piece I found especially galling:
Still, the Bush administration intends to try to find support from the crop of newly elected members of Congress -- particularly those who were elected from Republican districts -- as the president works to build support for his Iraq strategy before the State of the Union address, now set for Jan. 23.Oh reeeally? This smells like the president's '05 campaign to "pressure" embattled red-state Dems into endorsing his wildly unpopular Social Security plan. Two years later, an even less popular president is now going to attempt the same thing in support of an unpopular escalation plan for an unpopular war? It hasn't been 2002 for a while.On the issue of sending more troops to Iraq, the White House is also reaching out to Senate Democrats who are facing re-election in 2008.
Meanwhile, on the subject of potential "Dems-in-disarray" situations regarding Iraq, while I tend to be more of a disarray skeptic than Mike Crowley, I do agree with him that the issue of funding the war could get a bit thorny.
--Sam Rosenfeld
