Well, the minimum wage, college loan interest rates, rules of ethical conducts for the House, and similar situations are all based on common public knowledge and have probably been debated pretty extensively by the members of the party prior to the elections and certainly subsequent to the elections.
Aside from a fairly disastrous decision to simply defund the whole Iraq invasion, abandoning all our technology and materiel, etc., any reasoned decision should require the input of persons who have an actual knowledge of both the logistics required to pull out and the danger to which that would expose our troops. Since the questions cannot be answered until they are asked and the questions could not be asked until the Democrats held the power of committee chairs, making those decisions necessarily takes longer.
(This is not to say that they will respond in the manner you would prefer; I am only responding to your rhetorical (if not carefully thought out) question.)
It doesn’t. But when you have troops on the ground Congress just isn’t going to defund the operation. And they shouldn’t.
So are you saying, when Murtha, Pelosi, etc. wrote the President on 8/1/06 and said to start pulling our soldiers out of Iraq by the end of 2006, that wasn’t thought out" either? They just made it up and it wasn’t plausible.
Because we have troops on the ground, does that mean we can’t redeploy our troops either per Pelosi, et al, writing the President in August 06? Defunding is nothing more than a legislative redeployment. I don’t see any difference.
Of course we can do that, but Bush isn’t going to do that. And unless the Congress defunds the entire military, Bush can spend the military budget however he wants. They can refuse to give Bush additional monies, but it’s a simple fact that he’s going to do what he wants. He’s not standing for re-election, and thinks he’s doing the right thing. It will be, as he has already said, up to “future presidents” to get the troops out of Iraq.
In order to rescind the AUMF, a Congressional resolution to do so would have to pass both houses of Congress. And any resolution requiring passage by both houses of Congress (IIRC, it’s Article I, Section 7, but I’m too tired to look it up) is subject to Presidential veto. So they’d need 2/3 of each house to override.
I still think the Dems should draft a new AUMF superseding the old one and providing a timeline for gradual withdrawal. Bush would veto it, but it would put every member of Congress on record.
I find major fault with the premise that the Democrats were elected on a single issue mission. It wasn’t a huge shift in politics. Ohio fell because of Governor Taft and Ohio’s Senator Dewine was a RINO without a solid voting base.
Cindy Sheehan was useful up to a point but she did not represent the party politic. I don’t know who is funding her now but I doubt the DNC is going to keep paying the tab.
Besides the other good points made, any move toward defunding the troops would be political suicide, latched on by the Republicans as indicating the Dems weren’t backing our boys (and girls) in uniform. Why don’t we nationalize the oil companies while we’re at it? There has never been any talk of defunding, and doing so would be stupid.
The 100 hours initiatives were designed to be passable, popular, and of the type where a veto would be politically damaging for Bush. Defunding the war is none of these things.
Calling for defunding would be a Republicans fondest dream.
I seem to have heard that the massive corruption of the Republicans in Ohio might have had something to do with it also. Not Dewine, but I’m sure he suffered for the sins of his party members.
Hearings on Iraq start next week.
So, no, it doesn’t seem like Nancy Pelosi has sold us out.
I bet she’s bringing a really big shovel. 
Yes, I think they should do this, too. What do you think the chances of that happening are? How freakin’ unpopular does this war have to become before the Dems lose their timidity to act?
How unpopular does it have to be before the public would support it, and the President pay attention?
I’d never heard anyone suggest this idea before, but right now I like it.
The problems the Dems have is if they start forcing policy changes they’ll have to share in some of the blame for whatever situation Iraq is in when the '08 election rolls around. Still, if they really think the troops should be redeployed within some time frame (6 moths, 1 year, 2 years), then they should pass a resolution saying so. I think most Americans would cheer.
I agree completely. I think that it’s a damn shame that this “Democrats are against the military/are soft on defense” bullshit has become conventional wisdom. It seems that many of their decisions still are based on some fear that what they might say or do could be misconstrued by the right to fit into that meme.
I think the truth is that they have been very consistently thoughtful about issues of defense and much more supportive of the actual military than the Republicans have. Nevertheless, they are scared shitless of the boogie man of military-softness.
Hearings? How are hearings, right now, going to get our soldiers out of Iraq? Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid called for starting redeployment from Iraq by the end of 2006 during last year’s campaign year. Now instead of redeploying our troops they call for hearings! How many more brave US men and women are going to die in Iraq during these hearings?
Damn Democrats and their party favors! Now they’ve got the armed forces handing out those silly little gift bags, and I bet it’s going to increase our taxes…
Damn straight! That lying two-faced Pelosi should march right over to the Pentagon and order those generals to start the evacuation right now!!! :mad:
Absolutely! It’s her duty as Commander in Chief to do so.
We’re trying to win hearts and minds.
Harveyc, you keep insisting without proof or anything else that if the Democrats so much as said they would block further funding, Bush would withdraw the troops. Other people have said more convincingly that this isn’t the case. There is nothing the Democrats can do to get the soldiers out of there tomorrow.