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Escalation: The rare magical policy that’s as unpopular as it is stupid
By Ned | January 11, 2007
President Bush’s speech last night was pretty much what I expected it to be, but what a shoutout that really shouldn’t have been all that surprising. From the transcript:
Acting on the good advice of Senator Joe Lieberman and other key members of Congress, we will form a new, bipartisan working group that will help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror. This group will meet regularly with me and my administration. It will help strengthen our relationship with Congress.
There might well have been other members of Congress pushing that idea, but if there were, our very own Senator Lieberman was apparently the only one deserving of proper noun status. Lovely.
Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the speech, everyone except for a tiny handful of people are fleeing the idea of escalation like the plague. Out in the real world, escalation is extremely unpopular. Unsurprisingly, however, Congressional Republicans (and Lieberman) seem for the most part to be sticking to the plan, with a few exceptions which could signal a rift in the party over this. One of those exceptions is not the new Senate minority leader, who plans to filibuster any bill that opposes escalation. An odd position for the party that, when they were in power, wanted to annihilate the filibuster.
I suspect the votes are there to overrule a filibuster, even with Lieberman undoubtedly jumping ship. Let him. Breaking up a filibuster will expose these people for the fringe zealots that they are.
Speaking of fringe zealots, Senator Sam Brownback has become the first Republican presidential candidate to speak out against escalation. He’s one of those exceptions I was talking about earlier, and this is actually a pretty good example of why Brownback scares the crap out of me - this guy is a true believer, not some Republican lackey. A lot of Republicans recite some extremist nonsense to appeal to the Christian right, but this guy believes every word that comes out of his mouth, and that’s why when he actually does differ with the rest of the party he speaks up about it.
2008 is still a long way off, though. We’ve got a crisis on our hands right now, and if we can get more Republicans like Brownback on our side for the time being, wonderful. Congress needs to cut this thing off.
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