Listen closely, can you hear it? That is the soft sounds of the Democrats slowly back peddling:
Democrats’ ambitious plans to limit President Bush’s war authority and force a change of course in Iraq are faltering amid party divisions over how quickly and aggressively they should act.
A group of senior Senate Democrats is pushing to repeal the 2002 measure authorizing the war and write a new resolution restricting the mission and ordering troop withdrawals to begin by this summer. In the House, a respected veteran wants to use Congress’ spending power to essentially force Bush to scale back U.S. involvement in Iraq.
Both plans appear to lack the support they would need to prevail, however, as Democratic leaders struggle to form party consensus on how to move forward.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he wants to put off votes on the new, narrower war authorization so the Senate can turn to a measure enacting the recommendations of the bipartisan 9/11 commission.
It’s not like the left didn’t know it’s the Presidents job to run the war, not Congress:
[T]he president of the United States is commander in chief. It is up to him to come up for a plan. You can’t expect a congressman and senators who don’t have the same access to intelligence as the president does to come up with a plan to withdraw our troops from Iraq.
Howard Dean
The public understands also we’re not the commander in chief,
Charles E. Schumer
Democratic leaders in Congress say that voters are not demanding that candidates present a coherent plan to end the war. It is beyond the power of Congress to conduct military operations or order troop withdrawals in any case.
New York Times
But over the course of the last few weeks we have heard just the opposite from the left. They wanted to micro-manage the funds so THEY could tell our Commander In Chief how to run the war, specifically, how to run AWAY from the war.
Now they understand that even some of their own don’t want defeat. Sure, they want to figure out a way to win this thing quick, as does the President, but they are slowly starting to recognize that running from a fight accomplishes nothing. It actually makes us less safe by emboldening our enemy.
And make no mistake about it, they will be emboldened if we run from this thing.
So in the final analysis what we have here is the Democrats cutting and running from the cut and run.
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Tech Tags: Democrat Murtha Reid Pelosi Iraq Resolution Fund
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Schmuck Schumer said “The public understands also we’re not the commander in chief.”
Too bad Schmuckie hasn’t figured that out.