After the Democrats' legislative shock-and-awe campaign to approve a war funding bill that includes provisions for the withdrawal of American troops, Republicans said the bill was a prescription for defeat in Iraq.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accused the Democrats of setting a "surrender date," and charged that they were sending valuable intelligence to the other side. "Certainly they do not want to tell the enemy that they intended to run up the white flag in 365 days from today," McConnell lamented. "Setting a date for withdrawal is akin to sending a memo to our enemies to rest, refit and re-plan until the day we leave."
Democrats, still pinching themselves after pulling off the narrow victories in both chambers, were talking about staying tough and walking proud. "We gather on this occasion to bring the Iraq war to its fateful end," declared Senator Barack Obama, in a speech that had all the flames and flourish of a presidential address.
President Bush, of course, says he will veto whatever the Democrats send him if it includes withdrawal timetables. And it will.
So Washington is once again primed for a showdown. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says that on April 15, if the money approved in the supplemental funding bill is not available, the troops will begin seeing effects. Democrats don't believe him, and they plan to spend a lot of time during the recess discussing how our troops are well-cared for. They'll point out, it is Republicans standing in the way of support for the troops: Some Democrats are willing to force the confrontation by slow-walking revisions of the bill after the veto.
And Republicans who stand with the president will have a tough sell. Americans seem to have simply made up their minds about Iraq, and they want out. With the president's approval rating dipping below freezing, those up for re-election next year may be especially skittish. McConnell leads a caucus that must defend 21 incumbents next year, while Democrats are defending just 12. When he goes home to Kentucky this weekend, McConnell will be met by a $200,000 ad from Americans United for Change attacking him for supporting Bush on the war. The ads will run in the state's two biggest media markets, Louisville and Lexington, and on cable in seven markets altogether.
In Minnesota, Republican Norm Coleman, who voted against the withdrawal timeline, will have to explain it to relatives of the people in a National Guard unit , the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 34th Infantry Division, that just had its tour extended.
Coleman went to the floor to vent about the difficulties Iraq veterans encounter when they come home. But first, they have to come home. "On, January 10th of this year it was announced that the 1/34th would be extended for 125 days," Coleman said, "hopefully returning some time later this summer. This additional deployment time [means] that the 1/34th will be in Iraq 35 days longer than any other unit serving in Iraq."
Coleman said the guardsmen were not complaining, but he was complaining for them: "When the extension was announced I shared the frustration that they would not be coming home on schedule ... Families head about it while watching a press conference."
Polls show Coleman ahead of both of his opponents in the race. But Minnesota is a Democratic state: Coleman won in 2002 with 50 percent of the vote over late-starting former Vice President Walter Mondale, after the incumbent, Paul Wellstone, died in a plane crash 11 days before the election. Gore won Minnesota by two points, Kerry by three, and last year Democrat Amy Klobuchar won by more than 20 points over Representative Mark Kennedy, the largest margin of any contested senate race in the country.
It can't be any fun for Coleman to go home and stand with the president.
But predicting who wins the short-term war of words is like trying to determine who will win a marathon based on where they are after the first 50 yards. Two weeks from now will just be two weeks longer in the war.
And while both sides say they are amped-up for a recess slugfest, they know they are in for the long haul. Indeed, there is a resignation on both sides that may eventually prove helpful.
Democrats know that no matter how many resolutions they pass to "put pressure" on the president, or how many bills they force him to veto, or how much they squeeze Republicans with tough votes, they cannot end the war unless the president decides to cooperate.
He doesn't want to, and there is no scenario in play in which they see him changing his mind. "He's stubborn and not acting in the best interest of the country," one Democratic senator told me. So the war does not end until sometime after January 2009.
Republicans, on the other hand, are resigned to the fact that George W. Bush and his handling of the Iraq war will cost them the White House in 2008 -- and maybe even enlarge the Democratic majorities in the Congress. The latest Fox News poll, released Thursday, only confirms their fears.
According to the survey, conducted by Opinion Dynamics, a full two-thirds of American voters think the 44th president will be a Democrat, while only 22 percent see the GOP holding on to the White House. That is not a partisan split; those numbers include some depressed Republicans.
For both sides, these are tough realities to live with for two years, and to explain for the next 20 months. So it may take a while, but compromise is possible. Republicans need the president to be, or at least to appear, more flexible; Democrats need Republicans to tell the president that he needs to be more flexible. It's not a marriage made in heaven, but deals in this town have been fashioned from far lesser, more desperate, stuff.
Terence Samuel is a political writer in Washington, D.C. His weekly TAP Online column appears on Fridays.
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