These Republics are hoping they roll boxcars on these votes.

[Skidmore]

Especially those up for reelection. They are betting big odds on a loser. Snake eyes.

It astounds me that these people glom onto * and his crazed delusions with such fervor in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. Either they are all equally deluded and believe that hordes of terraists are going to descend on their hometowns at any moment, or they are being blackmailed, or are just plain craven.

They will be long remembered for the blood on their hands.

[kenny blankenship]

1. they are following the model of their GOP weasel forebears

The Republicans are getting pretty beat up over Iraq, rightly so. But as they look to the future and to rebuilding their strength they cannot afford to lose their base by bailing on Iraq. Their base is composed of religious and nationalist extremists. These lovely folk believe in war without end with the Muslim Middle East, and they welcome it. What they want Bush to do is to bomb Iraq into the stone age, and offer the survivors the choice of conversion to Christianity or death. Iran they think should be nuked preemptively. The idea of admitting the futility of our occupation in Iraq is impossible for them^*. The GOP cannot lose these people and survive; they are the nucleus of their voting strength. They are the voting foot soldiers who win elections, not the business class people who fund the party. So what they feel they must do is set the post-war stage for a long struggle to paint the loss in Iraq as "Democrat Party treason". In the years to come you'll hear every kind of lie about Iraq like "Well we we're winning there but then the Democrat commie pinko faggot hippies decided to give Iraq to the Muslims and apologize to Osama Bin Laden for 9-11".

This is the model laid down by Republicans after Vietnam. Weduh wuhn! Weduh wuhn if libruls hadn't stabbed our troops in the back while spittin' their face! Hitler used the same appeal to build the Nazi Party and its animus towards Social-Democrats and Jews.
The trauma of loss, and the ding to the national "honor" which Republicans feel is their own masculine "honor", for which no sacrifice of other people's lives and money is too great, gives Republicans a powerful emotional reservoir to fuel their party and bind people to it--it's a grievance they never get over personally which can be milked politically by fixing blame for their emasculation onto the other party.

I don't know if Boehner and McConnell have been given the advance tip from Bush about definite war plans against Iran, but sometimes it really looks like they're anticipating a widening of the conflict. Oh won't the Democrats be wrong-footed when Bush unleashes the bombing campaign on Iran he's promised us they may think. An expanded war that involves Iran as the primary enemy--as the "real" enemy in Iraq (finally unmasked by double-nought spy Gee Duhbya Bush), as the sponsor of terrorists everywhere, and as, gosh, the Center of Eeevil in the World--may change the complexion of the war debate before the 2008 elections. People in this country hate Iran; war with Iran before the Iraq Invasion would have been an easy sell. There are no rules against insider trading in politics and the GOP leadership may be positioning themselves to profit by war fever again, knowing that it's coming. On the other hand, aligning themselves with the idea of open-ended commitment to Iraq may just be attempting to frame the post-war blame game that Republicans seem to live for. We were for victory and the Democrats were for defeat and look what happened when the Democrats were in power in Congress: we lost in Iraq! Over time, repeated often enough loudly enough, the Big Lie can work.

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* Even if the futility of the war was a permissible concept for them, that would merely lead them to the genocidal impulse already mentioned: if those people won't accept our gift of occupation, so the thinking goes, they should all be killed until they do accept us--and Jesus too!