Nancy Pelosi responds to Bush's veto threat on Iraq timetable

This is just priceless! Here is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's response to President Bush's veto threat of the Iraq war funding bill with the withdrawal timetable. From YouTube:



Pelosi: Calm down with the threats! There is a new Congress in town! Pelosi offers Bush a means of compromise on this bill, but it is not the type of GOP rubber-stamp congressional compromise that the Bush White House has been used to. Pelosi tells Bush that there will be accountability for this war. There will be deadlines and benchmarks in order to determine whether U.S. and Iraqi forces are succeeding in stabilizing the country. There will be penalties levied against the Maliki government for failing to keep the country together. The U.S. war in Iraq is no longer an open-ended commitment. The Democrats are not going to back down against the Bush White House. They are not going to play rubber-stamp. What is more, I would say that a Bush veto against the Iraq war funding bill will cause more political damage against the Bush White House and the Republicans, rather than the Democrats. Consider this March 14, 2006 CNN Poll:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Growing dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq has driven President Bush's approval rating to a new low of 36 percent, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday.

Only 38 percent said they believe the nearly 3-year-old war was going well for the United States, down from 46 percent in January, while 60 percent said they believed the war was going poorly.

Nearly half of those polled said they believe Democrats would do a better job of managing the war -- even though only a quarter of them said the opposition party has a clear plan for resolving the situation. (Watch what the poll might mean at election time -- 1:49)

Pollsters quizzed 1,001 adults Friday through Sunday for the poll; most questions had a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Fifty-seven percent said they believe the March 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake, near September's record high of 59 percent. That question had a sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 points. (Interactive: Poll results)

Bush's approval rating of 36 percent is the lowest mark of his presidency in a Gallup poll, falling a percentage point below the 37 percent approval he scored in November. The previous CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted February 28-March 1, put his job approval at 38 percent. (View Bush's second term approval ratings)

Sixty percent of those surveyed in the latest poll said they disapproved of his performance in office, the same figure as in the last poll. (Read full results document -- PDF)

[....]

With congressional elections approaching, public discontent with the war appeared to be taking a toll on Bush's fellow Republicans.

Only 32 percent polled over the weekend said they thought Bush had a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq, while 67 percent said he did not.

Only 25 percent said Democrats had a clear plan -- but 48 percent said Democrats would do a better job managing the issue, while 40 percent favored Republicans.

That is the key here--the American public has concluded that the Bush administration has no plan for resolving this U.S. war in Iraq. While they may also not believe that the Democrats do not have a clear plan for getting out of Iraq, the American public is still giving the benefit of the doubt to the Democrats in coming up with a plan. A withdrawal plan has now passed the Democratic Congress with the war funding bill. This only improves the Democrats standing here. If President Bush vetoes the war funding/withdrawal timetable bill, then Bush is telling the American people that he doesn't want to pull the U.S. out of the Iraq war. In other words, President Bush is forcing the Republican Party to take a pro-war stance on Iraq, when the American public is becoming increasingly anti-Iraq-war. This is the problem that the Bush White House faces here on this veto threat. President Bush is trying to force the Republicans to accept a pro-war stance, just one year before the 2008 elections where Iraq will become the major issue, with an American public that is turning against the war. No amount of White House spin, trying to blame the Democrats, can stop this political and electoral disaster that is facing the Republicans.