When President Bush backed the immigration bill, he not only lost a lot of his base but left an opening for wavering legislators to drop support on other issues without facing political blowback:
Sen. Pete Domenici (N.M.), a 36-year Republican veteran of the Senate, abandoned President Bush's Iraq war policy today by publicly endorsing legislation designed to withdraw nearly all U.S. troops from Iraq by March 2008.
Domenici has been a backer from the beginning but now sees that the war could well be a liability. He saw that conservatives bailed on the Kennedy/Bush/McCain immigration bill and figured he could come out against the Iraq war without much criticism as the base is divided.
The door was opened by Sens. Richard Lugar and John Warner and I would imagine that there will be several more jumping ship after Domenici. The fact that the war is an important part of the overall anti-terror strategy means nothing when it comes to political maneuvering by seasoned senators like Domenici.
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 1)
1. I believe Senator Domenici is not upset with the performance of our troops, but with the do-nothing Iraqi government. He rightly sees that a blank check from the U.S. military to Mr. Malacki's parliament will be spent wastefully and fully. If it was only dollars, maybe we could print enough to satisfy them. But there is a lot of American blood being spent with no end in sight.
President Bush asks for more of our patience, courage and sacrifice. But he is already overdrawn on the patience, we are not willing to sacrifice any more soldiers, and some of us are finally summoning up the courage to tell him HE is the one who needs to change.
Steve Bonomo at 11:43PM on Jul 5th 2007
2. You are beginning to understand "The Power of Words" and Scott you are trying to get ahead of the "Free Iraq" debate. I see you are using phrases like "Jump Ship", "Abandon", "Surrender","Defection" and "Loss" to scare the population to support endless war. How about the words "Bully", "Coward", or "Occupation" to drive the debate? These words don't have the same emotional impact because of the fear of another 9-11. With this fear too great to overcome, we must define 9-11. What was 9-11? Was it a tremendous victory of evil over good? No! 9-11 was the failure of good to stop evil because we played politics with our national security. Where were our air defenses on 9-11? Why did the Bush Team not tell us about the desire to strike inside the US? With all Bush knew, why was he reading when the first building was struck. If you can't win the debate people want you to have, change the debate to one you can win. Finally, do you think America would allow Bush to win an occupation of a nation that didn't attack us on 9-11? What is "Iraqi Freedom?" It's not an endless occupation. What better Christmas present could we give the world than Iraqi Freedom?
Cecil Jones at 5:26PM on Jul 8th 2007