Democrats in Turmoil Over Iraq

Desperately casting about for a position on Iraq, the Democrats this afternoon floated the idea of cutting $20 billion from appropriations for the war effort:

Democrats are considering cutting President Bush’s budget $142 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year by $20 billion, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said Thursday.
Conrad said a final decision has not been made whether to impose the $20 billion cut.

Only a few hours later, that trial balloon was shot down, as the Democrats reversed course once again: “Dems Nix Idea of Military Budget Cuts”

Just hours after floating the idea of cutting $20 billion from President Bush’s $142 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad was overruled by fellow Democrats Thursday.
“It’s nothing that any of us are considering,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters.

Less than three months after being swept into office on what they claimed was a tide of anti-Iraq war sentiment, the Democrats are in a state of complete disarray, unable to come up with a policy on the war and fearful of taking responsibility for whatever decisions they may make.
I don’t know, I suppose in a pinch they could always try voting for the policies they ran on.
PAUL adds: This is a bizarre and irony-rich situation. If the Democrats are convinced that the war can’t be won, then their best strategy is the one they’ve accidentally adopted thus far — doing nothing serious to end it — minus all the false starts that make them look bad. Why? Because if the war is perceived as going badly, the country will be inclined to vote for Democrats. So there’s no percentage in shutting the war down and no need to drift left on the issue, since the anti-war vote has nowhere else to go. Interfering with the president’s ability to prosecute the war is politically advantageous for the Dems only if they think we can win in Iraq.
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