Inscrutable Senate Republicans

Sen. Warner

There must be something in the air of the marbled Senate chamber that triggers a self-destruct mechanism in Blue-Blood Republicans. This time, it was Sen. John Warner of Virginia, who today, very publicly urged President Bush to begin a gradual troop withdrawal in Iraq. Even though the US military has made astounding progress in terms of bringing much-needed stability to Iraq, and even though polls indicate steady growing public support for the Iraq mission, Sen. Warner decided that fidelity to the tradition of loose-canon Senate Republicanism ought to take precedence over sound policy making.

First, it was immigration: A renegade band of Republican senators, led by John McCain, teamed up with the Democrat old goat and archliberal Ted Kennedy to craft a thinly veiled, de facto amnesty bill for millions of illegal aliens. Outraged, conservatives across the country inundated senate staffers with calls demanding the excretion of the obscene bill under consideration. Were it not for the unprecedented show of public revulsion, the bill would have certainly become law. One would like to think that learned, chastened Republicans would have gotten wise to the prime lesson of politics: Don't alienate yourself from those who got you into office in the first place. In other words, don't jilt the base.

Now, it's Iraq policy: This evening's national news and the BBC gave Sen. Warner's Iraq cant big-time coverage. (You'll notice that whenever a Republican criticizes the president, media pundits start panting like crazed dogs.) More astonishing than Sen. Warner's intransigence, however, is his failure to read the positive signs of the times: Iraq is changing for the better precisely because of the troop surge. Why begin discussion of pulling out at this critical juncture? Mewls the querulous senator:

“We simply cannot as a nation stand and continue to put our troops at continuous risk of loss of life and limb without beginning to take some decisive action."

Yawn. Beyond the sedative effect of such a bland remark, I thought general wisdom was in agreement that "decisive action" was the implementation of the surge, which has seen tangible results.

Verb. sap.: Senators like Warner need to be hung out to dry.