Thursday, May 31, 2007

War Funding Bill




Democrats really piss me off. Don't get me wrong, I'm even less happy with Republicans but at least republicans know how to control the message. Republicans can get the upper hand in the public discourse even when their ideas are all wrong and the polls are in the basement. Democrats. . . Democrats can't seem to get the upper hand when all the facts are on their side and %75 percent of the country is cheering them on.

This is about controlling the conversation. Republicans all know how to get on the same page and force the debate onto their own terms. The claim that "Cutting funding Hurts the troops" is completely baseless. The president and our government have the absolute responsibility to keep everyone in the military safe and equipped to the last man on the last day no matter what becomes of the funding for the mission they are on.

De-funding the mission in Iraq does not hurt one American soldier, yet the Republican message machine framed the whole debate so that the definition of "harm to troops" has become those conditions that force them to withdraw from harms way. The minority now controls the debate over not only the majority party in congress but also the majority of Americans.

The democrats allowed this to happen. In the effort to appear more independent and less prone to "group think" they have become a heard of cats trying to win a public debate against a pack of highly disciplined attack dogs. They have allowed the terms of the public debate to be defined in such a way that their most powerful leverage over the president, taking the funding away from his disastrous project, is something that they have voluntarily taken away from themselves so they won't look bad. . . .

I really hope they get their act together in congress. America threw Republicans out of Washington because they were letting the president drive our country off a cliff. They may just take some more and replace some democrats too, Lieberman style, until they get a majority that actually speaks for them.

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