New Virginia Senator James Webb tried an end run to stop the war in Iraq, by limiting the deployment options of the military. The idea of guaranteeing time between deployments made great sense rhetorically and it was hoped the idea of supporting the troops while stopping the war would enable them to pick off enough senators to get it done.

But it was not to be, as the WaPo reports, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is now giving up on clever strategies and going back to the old strategy which did not work last spring:

Instead, Reid will again push for a firm deadline, this time June 2008, along with a stronger effort at cutting off war funding.

"It's all definite timelines," Reid said.

The Senate will resume the war debate today, and Reid invited Republicans to offer proposals. His spokesman said that several possibilities are being negotiated, although it appeared unlikely they will meet the 60-vote threshold to pass.

Which is probably not going to work either, as long as General Petraeus is credibly reporting good news from the front. But this is as good a post as any to followup on the George Voinovich plan I talked about last Saturday. The plan was released on Tuesday, but as it turned out it didn't turn out to be a big deal at all, at least so far.

This week the focus was on the Webb amendment, and up to this point, the base of the Democratic party would view the Voinovich plan as a sellout of their principles, as it doesn't do all that much to get us out of Iraq, even if it's more than the president wants to do. But now that the Webb amendment has failed, and the Democrats are back at the drawing board, they might take a closer look at the Voinovich plan. Unless they are more concerned with appearances rather than effectiveness.