{"id":184,"date":"2007-02-08T09:38:41","date_gmt":"2007-02-08T13:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/08\/spineless-republicans-defect\/"},"modified":"2007-02-08T09:57:57","modified_gmt":"2007-02-08T13:57:57","slug":"spineless-republicans-defect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=184","title":{"rendered":"Spineless Republicans defect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It reads like a list of usual suspects &#8211; seven Republican Senators have threatened to surrender to Democrats on the nonbinding resolution to not support the President&#8217;s strategy in Iraq. According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/02\/07\/AR2007020702550.html\" target=\"_blank\">Washington Post<\/a>;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In a letter distributed yesterday evening to Senate leaders, <a href=\"http:\/\/projects.washingtonpost.com\/congress\/members\/w000154\/\"><font color=\"#0c4790\">John W. Warner<\/font><\/a> (Va.), <a href=\"http:\/\/projects.washingtonpost.com\/congress\/members\/h001028\/\"><font color=\"#0c4790\">Chuck Hagel<\/font><\/a> (Neb.) and five other GOP supporters of the resolution threatened to attach their measure to any bill sent to the floor in the coming weeks. Noting that the war is the &#8220;most pressing issue of our time,&#8221; the senators declared: &#8220;We will explore all of our options under the Senate procedures and practices to ensure a full and open debate.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The other 5 usual suspects;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The other Republican senators who signed the letter were <a href=\"http:\/\/projects.washingtonpost.com\/congress\/members\/c001035\/\"><font color=\"#0c4790\">Susan Collins<\/font><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/projects.washingtonpost.com\/congress\/members\/s000663\/\"><font color=\"#0c4790\">Olympia J. Snowe<\/font><\/a> of Maine, <a href=\"http:\/\/projects.washingtonpost.com\/congress\/members\/c001057\/\"><font color=\"#0c4790\">Norm Coleman<\/font><\/a> (Minn.), <a href=\"http:\/\/projects.washingtonpost.com\/congress\/members\/s001142\/\"><font color=\"#0c4790\">Gordon Smith<\/font><\/a> (Ore.), and <a href=\"http:\/\/projects.washingtonpost.com\/congress\/members\/v000126\/\"><font color=\"#0c4790\">George V. Voinovich<\/font><\/a> (Ohio).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ll tell ya what, I&#8217;m so tired of hearing Hagel, Collins, Snowe and Voinovich standing in the way of every traditionally Republican vote in the Senate from tax cuts to this nonbinding resolution, I hope the party throws them under the bus in their next bid for reelection. Does anyone really miss Lincoln Chaffee? I don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Of course the letter came out yesterday afternoon after Chief of Staff General Peter Pace said this according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washtimes.com\/national\/20070208-121345-7964r.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Stephen Dinan at the Washington Times<\/a>;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;From the standpoint of the troops, I believe that they understand how our legislature works and that they understand that there&#8217;s going to be this kind of debate,&#8221; said Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace, effectively taking out of play an argument that had been made by Mr. Bush&#8217;s spokesman and other top Republicans, who had warned resolutions disagreeing with the troop increase plan would send bad signals.<br \/>\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Joining Gen. Pace in testifying to the House Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the troops are &#8220;sophisticated enough to understand&#8221; that the debate is about a way to move forward in Iraq.<br \/>\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0But Gen. Pace said that would all change if today&#8217;s nonbinding resolutions turned into moves to cut off funding for the war effort &#8212; something some Democrats have proposed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So knowing those RINOs, they took that as signal to start leveraging their usually insignificant stature in the Senate.\u00c2\u00a0Political opportunists. Maybe they all need to come out of the closet.<\/p>\n<p>And all the while, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/story\/0,2933,250848,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">Pelosi is still worrying about her free airplane<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It reads like a list of usual suspects &#8211; seven Republican Senators have threatened to surrender &hellip; <a title=\"Spineless Republicans defect\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=184\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Spineless Republicans defect<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}