Murtha vs. Hoyer: Sit Back and Enjoy …
Today offers the kind of spectacle that is a small consolation prize for a party out of power: the victors pummeling each other over the spoils. The election having been lost, today’s majority leadership race is a win-win.
If Pelosi wins, she exalts John Murtha, an extreme anti-war zealot with a “Kick Me” sign taped on his back. This will clearly define the stakes in one of the most critical issues Americans face today. Our place in the world.
A Murtha win the day after Gen. John Abizaid told Congress the United States needs to maintain troop levels and boost advisors and training for Iraqi forces should send a clear message to American voters what their narrow, fickle majorities have wrought. Murtha brings the added benefit of a right-leaning record on issues such as abortion and gun rights. Combined with a lot of harumphy codgerness, that may offset the San Francisco agenda but, we can only hope, will drive a lot of his rank and file crazy.
Sit back and enjoy.
Given Murtha’s fondness for pork and his photo-finish win over ABSCAM investigators, Pelosi’s leadership choice is already an entertaining repudiation of the repudiation of the “culture of corruption” she cited in her endorsement. Then, there’s Alcee Hastings. But I digress …
If Pelosi and Murtha lose, and Steny Hoyer wins, that will mean … Pelosi has lost. Not a great kickoff to the speakership that a lot of people seem to assume is her license to lead President Bush around by the nose.
Then, we get to see if Bush is adept enough to exploit the gap. Hoyer, while his backers include Out of Iraqis, has at least publicly recognized an unprincipled and precipitous withdrawal would be a “disaster.”
Sit back and enjoy. As political theater, it promises to be a great show. And I want to be enthusiastic about it.
There’s just one thing.
It isn’t theater. Lives hang in the balance. Possibly thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives. None of what I’ve described above, if you care about the future of America and American values in the world, is much good. All of it carries the threat of grave consequences.
We’ve entered strange territory since last week’s election. We are waiting to see where power will reside and how it will be exercised. What vision will emerge and whether it has a prayer. We can only pray our leaders summon up the will to push forward a robust plan to destroy the militias and stabilize Iraq. But it may be that the best we can hope for is a bloody holding action at the White House and, along the 2008 election track, a Democratic leadership trainwreck.
Topics: Uncategorized
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:08 am on Thursday, November 16, 2006
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