Rudy Giuliani took the MoveOn.org ad calling General David Petraeus, David "Betray Us," and made it a campaign plus for him. He's gone after them hard and rightfully so. General Petraeus made our esteemed elected leaders look even more buffoonish than usual. He was calm, answered their questions with authority and acted as one would expect a high-ranking military man to act, with class and dignity. MoveOn attacked a good man for partisan political purposes and Rudy is now using it as a weapon:

As for the candidates on the Dems side, Richard Cohen takes them to task today:

Almost instantly, though, it got pretty hard to find a Democratic presidential candidate willing to dispute MoveOn.org. To his credit, Joe Biden did. "I don't buy into that," he said. "This is an honorable guy. He's telling the truth." But lonesome Joe, whose virtues have yet to come to the attention of the vast and apathetic electorate, was seconded only by Joe Lieberman, not a presidential candidate, and John Kerry, a man whose tomorrow is yesterday. When Clinton was asked about the ad, she avoided answering.

It may seem unfair to single out Clinton in this matter when the bunker in which she took shelter was crowded with her fellow quivering candidates. But Clinton is the front-runner, quite possibly the next president of the United States, so it is reasonable to focus on her and wonder if, as some allege, she does indeed have a spine. In this instance, it was nowhere to be found.

This was the opportunity for Hillary Clinton so show that she has what it takes to be commander-in -chief (shudder) of the U.S. military and she punted. A more astute politician -- such as her husband -- would have seen the advantage of defending a career Army officer and highly regarded leader and bent over backwards to make it known that they didn't agree with the offensive ad. Clinton failed and Rudy grabbed the ball and ran with it. That action may have cemented his cred with conservatives who abhor the MoveOn crowd and conservative Democrats who feel Hillary has wandered a little too far into left field for their tastes (note: link to NY Times piece for TimeSelect members until midnight tonight).

MoveOn has accomplished two things with this inane ad campaign, a campaign they will continue to run: they've alienated a good portion of the electorate and pushed them toward Rudy who could hold them with his unique blend of social liberalism and national defense conservatism.

Sam Nunn, the former Georgia Democrat senator, is contemplating a run for the White House:

the Georgia Tech campus, Nunn acknowledged that he - like former Georgia congressman Newt Gingrich - is considering a run for the White House next year.

But unlike Gingrich, Nunn would run outside the traditional two-party structure.

"It's a possibility, not a probability," said Nunn, now the head of a nonprofit organization out to reduce the threat posed by nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry. "My own thinking is, it may be a time for the country to say, 'Timeout. The two-party system has served us well, historically, but it's not serving us now.'"

I like Nunn and did ten years ago when he was still a senator. He's pragmatic and intelligent about military affairs and national security -- a rarity for a Democrat, and he's very well-versed on the threats we face as a nation. Some of the newer "Blue Dogs" and Joe Lieberman are of the same mold on major security issues.

Now the question would become, who would it hurt more, the Democrat or GOP nominee? I would posit the Democrat one suffers more. Nunn is not Ralph Nader nor is he Ross Perot, he a very experienced politician who would appeal to the Democrats who are pro-military and pro-national security (yes, some of those Democrats still exist). The election will be close and any votes siphoned off by Nunn would be disastrous to whoever loses them.

While he says he won't accept a VP offer, one has to think that he would indeed make a great running mate and give the Democrat nominee more gravitas on foreign affairs. As a Republican, I'd hate to see him on the ticket.

Update: Johnathan Singer at MyDD is worried that Nunn would hurt the Dems as well. However, the first commenter has a great point that Nunn's social conservatism could hurt a candidate like Giuliani in the south. He wouldn't hurt Fred Thompson though.

Congressional Quarterly's CQPolitics.com has an interesting story up today by David Nather, Lieberman's New Party Line, telling us that during last week's circus over the Iraq war, Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman was found in a surprising place:

Lately, though, Lieberman has taken his alliance with GOP leaders up a notch. During the abortive debate on the defense authorization bill, he attended daily tactical sessions to help them plan their strategy for combatting anti-war amendments and their rhetorical points for use against the Democrats. And in a fitting symbolic twist, some of those meetings convened just down the hall from the office of Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who essentially owes his 51-seat majority to Lieberman's continued caucusing with the Democrats.

Lieberman was successful in getting his amendment on Iran added to the now pulled 2008 Defense Authorization Act. That amendment points out Iran's current role in Iraq in attacking U.S. troops, requiring regular updates on how we are dealing with them. It passed by a vote of 97-0. That particular vote creates yet another logical conundrum for Democrats, as Senator Lindsey Graham pointed out, because what the Democrats are ultimately supporting (a retreat from combat and combat areas) would both hand Iran a victory over us and hand a large part of Iraq over to Iran.

Good for Senator Lieberman. This shows just how tenuous Harry Reid and the Dems' hold on majority status really is. If the Dems aggravate Lieberman too much, as is happening now, the Connecticut senator might find himself forced to caucus with the Republicans. If so, hello Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Hey, no one forced the Democrats to support Ned Lamont for Senate instead of Lieberman. One act of loyalty deserves another.

Wow! Joe Lieberman, who, let us not forget, was the Democrat VP candidate in 2000, may not be voting for a Democrat at all in 2008.

"I'm going to chose whichever candidate that I think will do the best job for our country, regardless of the party affiliation of that candidate," the Connecticut senator told reporters in the state capital Hartford.

"I'm not going to get involved until after both parties have their presumptive nominees and, frankly, to see if there is a strong independent candidate," he said.

The senator from Connecticut has been at odds with his party over his stance on the war and a few other things, culminating with the 1996 Senate race in which the party voters threw him out, but he ran as an Independent, winning back his seat.

After winning, Lieberman has continued his hawkish stance, even to the point of saying we should be prepared to bomb Iran (and he's right). As annoying as he's been to the Democrats, they should remember that control of the Senate hangs by a thread. Lieberman's thread. If he caucuses with the Republicans we have a Dick-Cheney-is-the-tie-vote situation.

The Democrats can gnash their teeth all they want, but Lieberman is their cross to bear if they want to keep the senate. At least until 2008.

Well, it's happened. 24 Republicans crossed over and joined 39 Democrats and Joe Lieberman and voted for cloture. Now the immigration bill heads for an up-down Senate vote and only needs 51 to pass. Among those crossing were Norm Coleman (R-MN), Kit Bond (R-MO) and John Ensign (R-NV).

The fight is not over, but the support of conservatives for those 24 senators and President Bush is:

"It's clear there's a large number of the House Republicans who have serious concerns with the Senate bill," said Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, the minority leader.

Several of the Republican amendments slated for upcoming Senate votes would make the bill tougher on unlawful immigrants, while those by Democrats would make it easier on those seeking to immigrate legally based solely on family ties.

Particularly worrisome to supporters, including the Bush administration, is a bipartisan amendment by Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Max Baucus, D-Mont., that would change the bill's new program for weeding out illegal employees from U.S. workplaces.

Politics, it's said, makes for strange bedfellows and it's been no truer than today. I find myself on the same side as Sens. Barack Obama and Max Baucus (although for different reasons). This is a pretty smart play by Obama for the record.

Few people are probably aware of the fact that John Kerry has a primary challenger for his U.S. Senate seat. Ed O'Reilly, a lawyer hailing from Gloucester, Mass., launched his bid to oust Kerry in May. His campaign largely targets Kerry's vote in favor of the war in Iraq.

Local media has essentially predicted that O'Reilly has a snowball's chance in hell of defeat Kerry, but recent polls from a couple months ago did suggest that Kerry is in fact vulnerable.

A 7News-Suffolk poll from this past April said that 56 percent of Massachusetts registered voters want to give someone else a shot at Kerry's Senate seat. Only 37 percent say he should run again.

Could Kerry be ousted in the primaries? It could happen.

Yesterday, Kos posted a very illuminating and (gasp!) measured piece on how seriously one should get wrapped up in the constant stream of polling data bombarding our computer and television screens.We are truly are a nation that is obsessed with the horse-race aspect of elections. Andrew Sullivan calls it "primary polling crack," and for good reason. But bloggers across the political divide are guilty of pouncing on the latest numbers and prognosticating the future to their readers as if God herself had whispered into their ears.

So how much credence should we give the rise and fall of percentage points? If history is a guide, Kos claims, not much. Looking back at the Gallup's Democratic primary numbers (national) in June of 2003 we see the following rankings:

Joe Lieberman 21%
Dick Gephardt 17%
John Kerry 13%
Bob Graham 7%
Howard Dean 7%

Now let's fast-forward to the first week of January, 2004, just before the Iowa Caucuses:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) is the first Democrat that I am aware of to state the reality of the situation with Iran: If they don't respond to diplomatic efforts to stop causing trouble in Iraq, we're going to have to move from diplomatic to military efforts.

As Lieberman put it:

"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," Lieberman told Bob Schieffer. "And to me, that would include a strike into... over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

The Indepedent former Democrat from Connecticut said that he was not calling for an invasion of Iran, but he did say the U.S. should target specific training camps.

"I think you could probably do a lot of it from the air, but they can't believe that they have immunity for training and equipping people to come in and kill Americans," Lieberman said.

Former Democrat Senator Bob Kerrey has a very good commentary piece in the Wall Street Journal today, The Left's Iraq Muddle. In it he correctly criticizes the Bush administration for how they have handled many things, from the original case for war against Iraq to how they have handled things after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But he also, as correctly, criticizes the majority of the Democrats and the totality of the left (of which the mainstream media is a part) for engaging in revisionism when claiming that Iraq wasn't much of a threat after 9/11 and for saying now that Iraq shouldn't be the focus of our fight against Islamic fundamentalism.

Let me restate the case for this Iraq war from the U.S. point of view. The U.S. led an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein because Iraq was rightly seen as a threat following Sept. 11, 2001. For two decades we had suffered attacks by radical Islamic groups but were lulled into a false sense of complacency because all previous attacks were "over there." It was our nation and our people who had been identified by Osama bin Laden as the "head of the snake." But suddenly Middle Eastern radicals had demonstrated extraordinary capacity to reach our shores.

...The key question for Congress is whether or not Iraq has become the primary battleground against the same radical Islamists who declared war on the U.S. in the 1990s and who have carried out a series of terrorist operations including 9/11. The answer is emphatically "yes."

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for someone like Kerrey to talk like this to fellow Democrats. While the Democrats have viewed Iraq since Abu Ghraib as a political tool to be used against Republicans and to regain power for themselves, responsible Democrats like Kerrey and Joe Lieberman see Iraq for what it was, is, and will be -- an integral part of the War on Terror.

221 votes to 205, the House yesterday passed a bill to fund the Iraq war:

The move, approved by 221 votes to 205, would release $US43 billion ($52bn) in emergency war funding but force Mr Bush to show progress in Iraq in July, before politicians vote on freeing up a second $US53bn chunk of funds.

It's anyones guess at this point if the Senate could pass this bill or if Majority Leader Harry Reid even wants to. First he would need to attract the support of 10 Republican senators -- nine to get to 60 votes, plus one more to make up for Joe Lieberman. Reid should be able to get five easily, and maybe even up to seven or eight, but ten is probably impossible. Which means that this plan is likely a dead-ender and won't even make it to the president's desk.

On the other hand there's going to be a lot of reporting on this part of the story:

Details emerged meanwhile of a White House visit by 11 concerned Republican House members on Tuesday, days after senior Republicans said a "Plan B" might be needed in Iraq absent clear success for the surge by September.

"I've been to a lot of meetings with the President about the war. This was one of the toughest, frankest, no-holds-barred meetings,'' said Republican politician Ray LaHood who was at Tuesday's meeting.

This is interesting and news-worthy, but it probably shouldn't be.

Republican John McCain says he intends to appoint a Democrat to a high-profile Cabinet post if he's elected president.

"There are very highly qualified Democrats on a number of issues," McCain said. "The more efforts you can make towards bipartisanship, I think in Washington today, the better off you are. But it also better be, one, an important post and, two, a person who has the ear of the president."

It was but one of a growing list of promises by the Arizona senator as he campaigns for the White House aboard his luxury bus, the Straight Talk Express. Earlier, for instance, he had told Politico's Jonathan Martin that, as president, he'd hold a news conference at least every two weeks.

This is not really a new thing. President Bush kept Democrat Norm Mineta around for five years as secretary of transportation. Clinton had Republicans in his cabinet. There are 15 cabinet level posts by this Wikipedia which leaves plenty of room to tuck a Democrat somewhere they won't annoy anyone.

On my way to work I heard "once-I-was-a-Democrat" Joe proclaim:

"This congressionally ordered withdrawal of our troops from Iraq would essentially be giving up on our cause in Iraq just when our prospects are picking up there," he said. "It would essentially snatch defeat from the jaws of progress in Iraq today."

No kidding, it's an actual quote. The "jaws of progress." Not even Lieberman can claim there is any "victory" coming in Iraq. But after four years, thousands of our youth lost, tens of thousands wounded and the most hopeless FUBAR-mess anyone has seen, he says our prospects are "picking up." Wasn't that the purpose of "Mission Accomplished" or "We've Got Him" or maybe it was the "Bring It On" from his buddy George. Things are picking up? Picking up pieces maybe.

What would progress be anyway? Currently we're averaging 3 Americans dead and 9 wounded a day. Is progress 2 dead and 6 wounded? Is that progress? Do these so-called leaders have no compass at all or is it that they simply don't care? Fortunately, the American people do care. We are a proud people and we will achieve progress by saving our troops from ever more "progress" and "good prospects." One of the longest wars in our history must come to a close. You want to support the troops Mr. Lieberman? Focus on saving them. That would be progress.

For anyone still holding to the fiction that most of the troops support the Bush & the Republican War: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17773294/site/newsweek/

Democrats only a few days ago were talking tough about revoking the authorization for the Iraq war, but coincidentally, after reports of Joe Lieberman leaving open the possibility of caucusing with Republicans, they are backing away from their Iraq plan.

Do they still want to cut and run and deliver a victory for the terrorists? Yes. But the last thing they want to do is entice Joe Lieberman to hand the Republicans a majority in the Senate again.

I don't think this waffling of the Democrats has anything to do with "divisions in their ranks," as the story says. It has to do with Joe Lieberman. They know that in order to hold on to their majority status in the Senate, they need to start supporting the troops and supporting victory in Iraq. Otherwise, they can kiss their majority in the Senate goodbye.

The vote for the non-binding, no confidence in our troops bill is done and the dovish Democrats are vanquished:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan resolution repudiating President George W. Bush's decision to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq failed to advance in the U.S. Senate on Monday, dealing a serious setback to critics of the war.

The resolution needed 60 votes before the 100-member Senate could begin debate, but it got 49, with 47 voting against. Although it would not have been binding on the president, the measure was the first serious effort in Congress to confront Bush over the unpopular Iraq war.

I agree with AP that it was just a show for the Democrats so they can say they tried to their far-left centrist base. It essentially meant nada, yet it is telling that it was so close. The result is also a stunning rebuke to Senators Biden and Hagel who wanted a much tougher resolution and were cajoled into the weaker bill voted on tonight.:

Levin, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., originally proposed a tougher resolution, but bowed to the request of Warner and other Republicans to soften the language while still voicing disapproval with the troop increase.

So the debate on the war rages everywhere but in the Senate. With both Hagel and Biden going on record with their feelings on the war and running for president, we'll have to see how this affects them politically. It could be more serious blow to Hagel with the GOP than Biden and the Democrats.

The only Republicans to join the retreaters majority party were Sens. Coleman and Collins. Sen. Lieberman joined the GOP, but no Democrats did. There were four senators who did not vote including Sen. John McCain and the still-recovering Tim Johnson.

By the way, note that Warner voted against his own bill.

Joe Lieberman was treated extremely poorly by the Democratic party and that party's left-wing. They sided with Ned Lamont, who may have been the worst Senate candidate in 2006, over a man who two years earlier was a serious candidate for President. All this because Lieberman had the guts to support a just war and looked at the bigger picture.

They focused like a laser on beating Lieberman in the primary, even though he was joined by Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and many other Senate Democrats in voting for and supporting the war. He was the whipping boy and they were relentless. Lamont did win the primary and got trounced by the newly minted Independent candidate Lieberman in November. Lieberman didn't backtrack, he stuck by his convictions and the people of Connecticut respected that.

Lieberman now also has the power as an Independent to stir up the pot:

"I'm going to do what most independents and a lot of Democrats and Republicans in America do, which is to take a look at all the candidates and then in the end, regardless of party, decide who I think will be best for the future of our country," Lieberman said Sunday.

"So I'm open to supporting a Democrat, Republican or even an Independent, if there's a strong one. Stay tuned," said the three-term lawmaker who caucuses with Senate Democrats.

That sounds to me as though he'll support his fellow Senator John McCain.