The Crossed Pond

Before I sign off for the night though, it appears that the Congressional Democratic caucus is going to pretty much entirely cave in their fight over funding the war. Bush’ll get his money, sans timetables, sans benchmarks, sans pork, with a federal minimum wage hike thrown in as a bone. On the short game at least, the score is Bush 1, Democrats 0.

Ed Morrissey at Captain’s Quarters predicts massive internal strife in the Democratic party over this, and lauds President Bush’s acumen in outplaying the Democrats. The former sounds like wishful thinking to me, with maybe a bit of transference thrown in. As for the latter, I think most neutral observers wouldn’t quite see it as a clear Bush win. If anything, the Democrats got exactly what they wanted; they made their point, didn’t get any actual responsibility for the war foisted on them (“our hands were tied!”), and just as importantly, kicked the issue down the road, closer to the election, which frankly isn’t exactly cause for celebration for the GOP.

I, like many, remain pretty skeptical that some kind of open revolt is going to occur in the Republican ranks come September, when my guess is the GOP tries to kick it down the road to January 09, but the longer Iraq remains a live issue, and the longer it remains tied to the Republican party, the better that is for the Democrats, any way you slice it. The War in Iraq is, for them, the gift that keeps on giving, and for the GOP, it’s pretty much stopped becoming an issue of IF Iraq is going to blow up in their faces, but when, and how often (answers: yes, 2006, and over and over again). My own guess is that September won’t be the end of it, but it’ll probably mark the start of the slow but steady shaving off of mainstream Republican support, a process which will continue apace, and I’m not even sure if it’ll be lucky for the GOP if it doesn’t boil over during their primary season or not. As Justin Raimondo says in the post I linked to a few beats down:

Six months from now, as the war gets even worse and the “surge” hasn’t amounted to a hill of beans, what Ron Paul is saying will be the emerging conventional wisdom, so much so that even the Republican leadership will have to acknowledge it.

I’m not sure about the last part of that, but I think he may well be right on the rest.

As far as Democratic reaction goes, here’s the first Dkos take, which I expect to be emblematic. Massive infighting and intra-party rupturing it ain’t.