If Dems were smart, they’d strike Bush while he's down - Using the "Six for '06"

The White House is in shambles. The President’s approval rating is at 30 percent, an all-time low. That means if you put three strangers in a room, two of them will talk about how little they think of the President’s job performance (the third will sit quiet, unable to defend him). The most powerful Vice President in American history is a witness for the defense, because his chief of staff lied to the Special Prosecutor. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is, for all intents and purposes, as dead as Saddam Hussein. And Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is in Western Asia trying to do the impossible — broker a peace deal between the Palestinian and Israeli governments on a deadline.

The Republican party is on the ropes. There is nobody to challenge Senator John McCain’s bid for the Republican nomination in 2008, and the only man who could potentially turn things around for the party — former Secretary of State and retired Gen. Colin Powell — isn’t running because his wife won’t let him. And the fact that Sen. McCain opposed overturning Roe v. Wade as recently as 1999 means a civil war is brewing within that party over their litmus test issue: reproductive freedom.

Assuming a “RINO” (Republican In Name Only) like McCain can survive the primary, he emerges a wounded national candidate at best, and a weak national candidate at worst.

No matter who wins their nomination, the Republican party cannot counter the perception that they’ve moved in ideological lockstep with the President after giving him a Congressional free ride. What do they have that can compare to the applause lines every Democratic candidate will use at every campaign stop when he or she takes credit for keeping their word and passing their “Six for ‘06” bills in their first hundred hours? The Republican front-runner is damaged goods, the Republican party has no legislative agenda and, most importantly, the Republican President is weaker than he’s ever been. Republicans everywhere are isolated, unpopular and out of ideas.

When the President said the Iraqi government would be able to take over security by November, he gave the Democrats a clock which they can simply run out now that they’ve kept their campaign promises. But that’s not the smart play. I know Democrats are not used to thinking like this, but politics is mortal combat. When your opponent is down, you go for the jugular and you kill him until he’s dead. The Democrats can deliver a death blow to the President and his party in one fell swoop. When the Chief of the executive branch laid out his asinine challenge to the majority in the legislative branch to craft policy and explain why they think it will be effective, he essentially outsourced his foreign policy to the Democrats,giving them control over the one issue where Republicans had a reliable advantage. What the Democratic majority must do is hit him hard while they have a chance to get the one thing they need: a commitment not to keep permanent or semi-permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq. So when the time eventually comes for U.S. troops to leave that country, the withdrawal will be complete.

Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can get Republican Senators John Warner and Sam Brownback and Generals George Casey and John Abizaid to go to the White House, sit down with the President and get him on record saying there will be no permanent or semipermanent U.S. bases in Iraq. He won’t want to go back to Congress to re-authorize the use of force in Iraq. He won’t want to explain how it’s a good idea for American military personnel to stay in Iraq to oversee a civil war between Iraqis. So he’ll have to compromise. Let the President call it a surge, an augmentation or “the Real World: Baghdad,” he’s already put an artificial timetable on the Iraqi government (November). There is a limit to the damage he can do before he leaves office.

It would be ironic for this President, who came to Washington calling himself a “uniter, not a divider,” who promised to “change the tone” and to “restore honor and dignity to the office” to leave behind a Democratic majority in Congress which actually united the government, a marginalized Republican party with a murky future and his Presidential legacy blown up along with an un-armored Humvee on Haifa Street in Baghdad. Getting him on the record as being opposed to permanent or semi-permanent bases in Iraq is the first step in getting our brave fighting men and women to the only place where they are truly safe: home.