John Nichols: Compromising Compromises the Senate

[babylonsister]

Compromising Compromises the Senate
by John Nichols

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Almost four years into a war that should never have been fought in the first place, with all the evidence that anyone could ask for pointing to the fact that things are getting worse rather than better, senators are trying to muster the will to support a non-binding expression of mild distaste for President Bush's troop surge fantasy.

Non-binding resolutions are the political equivalent of room-temperature tap water served up for toasts at a wedding reception. They beg the question: "What the hell are these people thinking?"

If senators wanted to tell Bush he was wrong, they should have moved a non-binding resolution the day he announced his scheme to surge 21,5OO additional troops into a quagmire of his own creation. Then, they should have gotten down to the serious business of obeying their sworn oaths to uphold a Constitution that requires them to check and balance an errant executive.

Instead, the Senate has dithered for the best part of a month and come up with something worse than a simple objection.

In order to forge a bipartisan alliance, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and the ranking Republican on the committee, Virginia's John Warner, have written a resolution that, in order to allow a few scared solons to place some rhetorical distance between themselves and a failed president, threatens to put the Senate on record as favoring more aggressive fighting in some parts of Iraq and opposing any effort to use the power of the purse to constrain the madness of our current King George.

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