California Conservative

Now that President Bush’s veto has been sustained, serious negotiations have begun. Here’s the details thus far:

President Bush and congressional leaders began negotiating a second war funding bill Wednesday, with Democrats offering the first major concession: dropping a timeline to bring troops home from Iraq.

Democrats backed off after the House failed, on a vote of 222 to 203, to override the president’s veto of a $124 billion measure that would have required U.S. forces to begin withdrawing as early as July.

Party leaders made clear that the next bill will have to include language that influences war policy. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., outlined a second bill that would step up Iraqi accountability, “transition” the U.S. military role and show “a reasonable way to end this war.”We made our position clear. He made his position clear. Now it is time for us to try to work together,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said after a White House meeting. “But make no mistake: Democrats are committed to ending this war.”

Bush said he is “confident that we can reach agreement” and assigned three top aides to negotiate. White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Budget Director Rob Portman will go to Capitol Hill today to sit down with leaders of both parties.

I’m betting that the negotiations won’t take much time since most of the language was being hammered out even while Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were playing the tough guy photo op game. The bottom line is that President Bush hung tough throughout. The Victory Caucus gave spineless RINO’s a shot of courage just when they needed it most.

The lesson conservatives must learn is that they can’t abandon President Bush because the activists agree with him that killing the jihadists is imperative if we are to survive as a nation. Tweak the policies that need tweaking but don’t abandon the goal of victory. If we stay faithful to the goal of aggressively killing the jihadists, we’ll win the foreign policy and national security battles with Democrats.

Another lesson that we must learn is that John Murtha and Russ Feingold don’t speak for the American heartland. They bluster alot but Americans aren’t defeatists. The United States is a country with a history of winning whatever fights we get into.

Two other dynamics will affect this debate. Presidential candidates like Rudy, Fred Thompson and John McCain will start getting more attention for their policies as we transition into the campaign. The other dynamic will affect the debate is that the Petraeus Surge will start yielding positive results. At the end of the day, that last dynamic would have the most potential impact on the debate.

Technorati Tags: President Bush, Veto, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain, David Petraeus, Victory Caucus, RINO, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Murtha, Russ Feingold, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 at 2:05 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Election 2008, Iraq, Military, Pelosi, Terrorism, W. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.