“Bush at the Tipping Point”
That’s the title of Howard Fineman’s latest Newsweek article and it couldn’t be more wrong in its presumptions. For example, here’s what Fineman writes:
Murtha had decided to come out of his corner in spectacular fashion. The result was a turning point, and a low point, in the war at home over the war in Iraq. Reassembling its campaign-style war-room apparatus, the White House went on the offensive against Democrats, who in turn were emboldened by polls that showed a cratering of the Bush presidency. After months of debate over the question of how the country got into Iraq, who knew what and when about the absence of WMD, the political center of gravity suddenly shifted to another question: how we get out.
Murtha was the one-man tipping point. Initially a strong supporter of the conflict, he had voted for it and the money to pay for it. But on his last trip to Iraq, he had become convinced not only that the war was unwinnable, but that the continued American military presence was making matters far worse. “We’re the target, we’re part of the problem,” he told NEWSWEEK.
If Mr. Fineman thinks that proposing a dangerous, ill-timed policy recommendation is coming “out of his corner in spectacular fashion”, then he’s nailed it. If policies matter, though, this was totally boneheaded because it sold out the Iraqis who’ve been fighting and dying. A day later, 200,000 Jordanians took to the streets to protest against Zarqawi. That Sunday, Zarqawi’s family denounced him and told the world, via the three biggest newspapers in Jordan, that they wouldn’t protect him and in fact, might even kill him.
As for him being a one-man tipping point that’s sending Bush’s approval ratings into the crapper, instead he’s responsible for the Friday night House vote that I predict will be seen as the turning point back into the Bush administration’s favor. As I wrote in A Spine Is Detected and in Reunited & Reinvigorated, this is most encouraging because Republicans are finally showing a spine. I’ve talked to a number of conservatives and they’re saying the same thing.
No liberal on defense, in 1967 O’Neill had stunned President Lyndon B. Johnson by telling him that the Vietnam War had become a lost cause. Now, Murtha mused, it was his turn to confront a president with harsh truths.
Which was precisely what the Democratic leadership wanted Murtha to do. A close ally, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, was anxious to open a second axis of attack on Iraq, and was aware of his growing antagonism toward the war. The two met and agreed that he would make his case in private to the party conference. After that, on his own, he would introduce a resolution calling for withdrawal of troops from Iraq “at the earliest practicable date.” Pelosi and the other liberals would keep their distance, while their own Marine charged up the Hill.
Tip O’Neill likely had some truths on his side in 1967. John Murtha didn’t. The reality is that Murtha didn’t come close to properly analyzing the situation. He said that the U.S. military had become the primary targets. That isn’t verifiable because Sunnis and Shi’ites are being targeted with equal ferocity.
Instead of accepting the improving conditions as fact, Murtha decided to take Nancy Pelosi’s advice and have his ’spontaneous’ eruption after making “his case in private to the party conference”. That’s hardly the way to win a principled argument. That sounds more like a publicity stunt designed to put the Administration on the defensive.
He might also have had more credibility if he hadn’t urged President Clinton, with much the same words, to pullout of Somalia.
But as they watched the continued deadly attacks by Sunni insurgents, and the continued erosion of Bush’s numbers as a war leader and honest man, Democrats were encouraged to up the ante in Congress. “The fact is, Bush’s war policy has failed,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, a former Clinton spin doctor who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “It’s failed! Who better to say so than Jack Murtha?”
This is the same Rahm Emanuel who said “at the right time, we will have a position” on Iraq. This is what passes for wisdom in the Democratic Party these days and in the Agenda Media but they don’t sail in the real world.
But fresh allegations that the government was secretly torturing Sunnis won’t help encourage that sect to take part in the December balloting.
That’s true as far as it goes but the Sunnis filing their own lists of candidates is a ‘bet-the-ranch’ tip if you’re betting on the Sunnis voting in big numbers.
A war-room defense was “something we did well during the campaign,” said Nicolle Wallace, Bush’s communications director. “Maybe incorrectly, we had hoped or presumed that wouldn’t be necessary after the election.” It is. The war room now is back, staffed with many of the same people who ran it in 2004, led by the Boy Genius himself, Karl Rove.
Game. Set. Match. When General Rove goes on the offensive, Democrats best beware because he’s a master technician and strategist. Rest assured, too, that Gen. Rove doesn’t take prisoners, either.
Cross-posted at Let Freedom Ring