{"id":287,"date":"2007-04-09T10:50:03","date_gmt":"2007-04-09T15:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/09\/levin-finally-admits-democrats-are-clueless-in-iraq\/"},"modified":"2007-04-09T18:02:51","modified_gmt":"2007-04-09T23:02:51","slug":"levin-finally-admits-democrats-are-clueless-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=287","title":{"rendered":"Levin finally admits Democrats are clueless on Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I figure the folks over at HuffPo, et al. have smoke coming out of their ears after Carl Levin admitted that Congress won&#8217;t cut off funding for the Iraq war. From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601103&#038;sid=a4cDKGuOjGaE\" target=\"_blank\">Bloomberg<\/a>;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not going to cut off funding for the troops,&#8221; the 72-year-old Michigan Democrat said on ABC&#8217;s &#8220;This Week&#8221; program. &#8220;But what we should do, and we&#8217;re going to do, is continue to press this president to put some pressure on the Iraqi leaders to reach a political settlement.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So why didn&#8217;t they just say that in the first place? If that&#8217;s what Levin admits that they &#8220;should&#8221; do, why all of the dust clouds about troop withdrawals and time schedules? Why&#8217;d ya&#8217;all spend so much time buying each other off with pork?\u00c2\u00a0Because the half-wits from Code Pink and the KosKids won&#8217;t stand for it, that&#8217;s why.\u00c2\u00a0And they still\u00c2\u00a0believe all that talk about a &#8220;mandate&#8221; for Democrats to end the war.<\/p>\n<p>If Democrats had a &#8220;mandate&#8221; they&#8217;d have a majority in Congress to match. As it is, when Lieberman votes with Republicans, Democrats are screwed in the Senate. In the House, in November 435 seats were up for a vote and only 286 (53%) went for Democrats. That&#8217;s a majority, but it ain&#8217;t no mandate, folks.<\/p>\n<p>Of course there are people in Congress that you can&#8217;t tell which side they&#8217;re on\u00c2\u00a0 &#8211; like Arlen Specter, who the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/world\/articles\/2007\/04\/09\/levin_opposes_bid_to_cut_off_war_funds\/\" target=\"_blank\">Boston Globe<\/a> quotes;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said &#8220;there have not been sufficient efforts at discussions&#8221; between lawmakers and the White House.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We cannot leave the troops unfunded in the field,&#8221; Specter said on CNN&#8217;s &#8220;Late Edition.&#8221; &#8220;That just can&#8217;t be done. And Congress is not in a position to micromanage the war. But we do not have any good alternative. Right now, you can&#8217;t see the end of the tunnel, let alone a light at the end of the tunnel.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Specter said he was not prepared &#8220;to withdraw funding at this time. But my patience, like many others, is growing very thin.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>My patience is growing thin, too, Arlen. Quit pandering to the extreme elements of THE OTHER PARTY and grow a fricken backbone. It&#8217;s guys like you that muddy the debate. Either mount that horse or go sit in the barn.<\/p>\n<p>And little Chuckie Schumer is still living in an alternate universe, according to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/04\/08\/AR2007040800898.html\" target=\"_blank\">Washington Post<\/a>;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Although Democrats expect to have to negotiate with the White House, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) made clear on &#8220;Fox News Sunday&#8221; that they would portray a veto as Bush denying funds to the military.<\/p>\n<p>Schumer added that the president must change his Iraq strategy, because &#8220;70 percent of the American people feel it&#8217;s misguided. If a change in strategy means not supporting the troops, then 70 percent of the American people don&#8217;t support the troops.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Which strategy is Schumer talking about? The one in November or the most recent one? Or is he just yammering to keep people confused?<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.washingtonpost.com\/the-talk\/2007\/04\/april_8_democrats_willing_to_d_1.html?hpid=topnews\" target=\"_blank\">Washington Post&#8217;s The Talk<\/a>, they quoted Schumer differently &#8211; in the context of a threat;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Democrats also suggested their strategy would be to portray Bush as the one who is denying funds to the troops.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Should he veto this bill, which means he will be vetoing the money for the troops, we will try to come up with a way, &#8230; trying to compromise with the White House, that both supports the troops and yet changes the strategy in Iraq, which we feel is misguided,&#8221; Sen. <strong><font color=\"#0c4790\">Charles E. Schumer<\/font><\/strong> (D-N.Y.) said on &#8220;Fox News Sunday.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So they&#8217;re trying the old strategy that worked for them in 1995 budget battle &#8211; blame their opponents with the help of their willing accomplices in the media. But, I think it&#8217;ll backfire this time &#8211; just because the <a href=\"http:\/\/decision08.net\/2006\/03\/16\/the-nutroots%C2%AE-manifesto\/\" target=\"_blank\">nutroots<\/a> have already shown us that their party, that MoveOn claims to have bought and paid for, is the party that can&#8217;t support the troops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I figure the folks over at HuffPo, et al. have smoke coming out of their &hellip; <a title=\"Levin finally admits Democrats are clueless on Iraq\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=287\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Levin finally admits Democrats are clueless on Iraq<\/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":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287","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=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}