After reading dday's excellent recommended diary about the LA Times Fred Thompson article, I decided to meander over to the conservative blog community Republican corporate enterprise RedState to check their reaction. Sure enough, they've just posted a front page defense of Fred! on the site. It's typical RedState fare, and not worth spending too much time on. Scroll down the page just a bit, however, and things get interesting.
Take the jump...
When I first saw the post titled "A Brief Observation on the Domenici Defection", I figured I'd indulge in a little schadenfreude and maybe a few chuckles. Then I noticed the post had well over a hundred comments and thought I'd be indulging in a lot of schadenfreude. What I read literally blew me away.
In it, party hack front page poster Leon H Wolf posits:
There has been much consternation and debate over the last few days in the right blogosphere about the defection of Pete Domenici on Iraq. The defection of Domenici himself is a relatively minor thing, since the Senate still presumably has the votes to uphold any Bush vetoes on Iraq. However, it portends very serious things indeed for the political future of the Iraq mission.
...
What does the future hold in the Senate? My belief is that Domenici is leading the pack only insofar as he’s not willing to go through the motions of waiting for the Petraeus report. I think that probably over a dozen Republicans are ready to jump off the bandwagon, but have agreed to wait at least until September for it. Before Christmas, the Senate will have sufficient votes to override Bush vetoes on Iraq. I don’t have as good of a sense of the House, but since they’re all up for re-election, I don’t think they’ll be far behind. What is to be done?
...
Tough times are coming for the political future of the Iraq war. My guess, and I have nothing to base this on but a hunch, is that after Petraeus presents his report, Bush will receive a private visit from 15-20 GOP Senate members who will urge him to begin closing up shop in Iraq. If he does not, those same Senators will quickly take their defections public, as have Domenici, Lugar, Hagel, and Voinovich. At some point, we can’t keep abandoning our own over Iraq without returning to New Deal-era levels of Democratic dominance. And in exchange, we would get I suppose an extra nine months on the ground in Iraq – from March of 2008 to January of 2009 when President Clinton or Obama pulls the troops out for us.
Emphases added
This is nothing less than the Republican Party preparing their "base" for the inevitable. If it's on RedState's front page, they already know it's going to happen.
So how are they taking it? Here's a small taste...
Frustration is ok, surrendering is not by Finrod
Do you want to pull US troops out as soon as possible no matter what the situation is in Iraq? If no, then you have nothing to worry about.
We've all had various degrees of frustration with the military effort in Iraq. But the vast majority of us (us here at Redstate, that is) want to see this thing through and done right.
You don't pull a cake out of the oven until it's finished baking, or else you have a total mess. Same thing goes for pulling out of wars.
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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community
Yep. War is exactly like baking a cake.
surreender is not appropriate yet by any means by gideon1789
it's been four years, but under only one strategy. how many strategies did lincoln try before winning the civil war?
we shouldn't even be considering retreat at this point. four or five strategies and five years later, maybe we can reassess the cost.
3500 dead and four years of stupidity doesn't support giving up - esp. not when highly capable men like frederick kagan and gen. petraeus are on the job.
"During my lifetime, all our problems have come from mainland Europe, and all the solutions from the English-speaking nations across the world." - Thatcher
Surreender?
how about we... by pangloss
How about we...
(1)stand by our principles
(2)support elected officials who feel the same way
(3)fight those who do not
(4)let history prove us right
(5)regain temporary defections with lasting majorities
long term folks, long term.
Some things are too important to worry about political games.
"Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the Democrats believe every day is April 15."
-Ronald Reagan
Principles? BWAHAHAHAHA
If Al Qaeda wins in Iraq by clacourr
and gains a foothold there with control of the oil reserves, everything else the conservatives fight for will be in jeopardy.
Is this it? We surrender to Al Qaeda?
Please, clacourr, explain to me what exactly it is that conservatives fight for?
Leon responds:
You get nine months. by Leon H Wolf
Let us say that things pan out as I have predicted. That would mean substantial withdrawal by sometime in the ballpark of March of 2008. Now let us suppose that the Republicans in question decide, in this hypothetical alternate universe, that they are going to summarily ignore the polls and stand behind the President in favor of an indefinite future presence in Iraq. In this hypothetical alternate universe, we don't get an additional 9 years, or even 2 or 3 years, of this troop level on the ground. We get nine months - from March 2008 to January 2009 - when a Democrat assumes control of the White House and pulls us out immediately.
If anyone thinks that any Republican candidate pushing for a continued presence in Iraq during the honest-to-Gosh election heat-up next October has a snowball's chance in hell of winning the election, I suggest that you've either foreseen some completely unforeseeable event happening in Iraq, or that you're not connected to political reality right now.
I'm just stating what I see as reality. THe choice is not between having a chance at winning the 2008 elections and 3 or 4 more years in Iraq, it's between having a chance at winning the 2008 elections and 9 more months in Iraq. So I guess the question is whether we will be able to accomplish enough within those 9 months to make it worth it.
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[F]or by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred...
-John Locke
The war is over.