Informed Speculation

Once again, I must preface my remarks by saying I realize there are some Republicans against the war.  The ‘myth’ that I am attempting to fight is that opposition to the war is something that is broadly bipartisan, rather than occuring in isolated pockets of the Republican Party.  I know quite well that opposition is greater now than it was, say, two years ago, but we are a far distance from truly ‘bipartisan’ opposition.

Prove it, you say…well, fortunately, pollster and analyst Stuart Rothenberg (no fan of the war or Republicans) has saved me the trouble:

Moments after the House voted against President Bush’s additional deployment of troops to Iraq – the so-called surge, if you are for it or trying to be neutral, or the so-called escalation, if you are opposed to it – House Democrats sent out a flurry of e-mails crowing about the “bipartisan” support for it.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel’s release was titled, “Emanuel Statement on Bipartisan Approval of Iraq Resolution,” while House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s was headlined an only slightly different, “Bipartisan Majority in U.S. House Votes Against the President’s Plan to Escalate the War in Iraq.”

On the House floor, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, staying true to her party’s talking points, also referred to the resolution as “bipartisan.”

In fact, support for the Iraq resolution was bipartisan only in the technical sense that the vote on the resolution was not completely along party lines. But it was awfully close to that, and referring to the final vote as bipartisan has more to do with Democratic strategy and nervousness than reality.

Only 17 Republicans – or 8.4% of GOP House members – joined 225 Democrats in voting for the resolution, while over 90% of Republicans opposed passage of the resolution. Republicans constituted just 7% of the 242 House members who supported the resolution. Only two House Democrats voted with 185 Republicans against the resolution.

Democrats had enough votes to pass the resolution without any GOP support, and given national polls showing widespread dissatisfaction with the Bush policy, just 17 Republican votes for the resolution is stunningly small, and little or no indication of a bipartisan consensus.

Clearly, the vote on the resolution was very much partisan, though with a handful of defections. We can argue over what would constitute a truly bipartisan vote, but 92% of Republicans voting against something and 99% of Democrats voting for it surely doesn’t come close to passing the threshold. By insisting, whether in a press release, in statements on the floor or in interviews after the fact, that the vote was bipartisan, Democratic leaders look silly.

Rothenberg thinks Democrats should embrace the partisan divide rather than run from it…not so Brendan Miniter:

In mid-January an Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that public support for President Bush’s troop surge increased to 35%, up from 26% a few weeks earlier. The same poll found that a slim majority of Americans were against the war in Iraq, but 68% said they opposed shutting off funds to fight it, and 60% said they would oppose Congress’s withholding funds necessary to send additional troops.

The poll was not an anomaly. Hillary Clinton and her chief strategist, Mark Penn, himself a former pollster, know how to read public opinion surveys. Which may explain why she steadfastly refuses to “apologize” for voting to authorize the war in 2002 while also calling for Mr. Bush to end the war before he leaves office and favoring a nonbinding Senate resolution opposing an “escalation.” The war may not be popular, but the public isn’t ready to support losing either.

What then is next in the war over the war? The House passed its nonbinding resolution last week and won votes of just 17 Republicans. Rep. John Murtha, who’s spent more than two decades amassing political clout by doling out defense earmarks, might prefer to “slow bleed” the administration by putting conditions on money appropriated to fight the war. Mr. Murtha, with the support of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, may even succeed at hamstringing the president. But political success of such a strategy depends on two things: first, that U.S. troops will fail to win on the ground in Iraq; second, that a fickle public doesn’t turn around and blame Democrats for that failure.

During the government shutdown in 1995, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich learned the hard way that the public can turn on congressional leaders who pick public fights with sitting president for little apparent gain. With the nonbinding resolution, Speaker Pelosi might have signed up for co-ownership of failure in Iraq, with little right to share credit for victory should the surge succeed.

Ah, there’s the rub: “should the surge succeed”.  Whether Rothenberg or Miniter turns out to be correct depends on what happens on the ground.  After some initial success in calming Baghdad, there have been further car bombings with numerous fatalities.  It’s still early in the surge, but we’ve clearly got a lot of work ahead of us…