WASHINGTON Feb 5, 2007 (AP)— Republicans blocked a full-fledged Senate debate over Iraq on Monday, but Democrats vowed they still would find a way to force President Bush to change course in a war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 U.S. troops.
"We must heed the results of the November elections and the wishes of the American people," said Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Reid, D-Nev., spoke moments before a vote that sidetracked a nonbinding measure expressing disagreement with Bush's plan to deploy an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq.
The vote was 49-47, or 11 short of the 60 needed to go ahead with debate, and left the fate of the measure uncertain.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky described the test vote as merely a "bump in the road" and added that GOP lawmakers "welcome the debate and are happy to have it."
The political jockeying unfolded as Democrats sought passage of a measure, supported by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., that is critical of the administration's new Iraq policy. It was the first time Democrats had scheduled a sustained debate on the war since they won control over Congress in last fall's midterm elections.
McConnell called for equal treatment for an alternative measure, backed by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., saying Congress should neither cut nor eliminate funding for troops in the field. That measure takes no position on the war or the president's decision to deploy additional forces.
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Before the test vote, McConnell sought to deflect charges that Republicans were hoping to block a debate. He said the roll call was meaningless, a "bump in the road" required to settle a procedural problem.
But behind the procedural quarrel lay uncertainty about the verdict the Senate would ultimately reach on Bush's decision to send 21,500 additional troops.
Democrats hoped to gain enough Republican votes to pass the measure expressing disagreement with Bush's decision, and to send the commander in chief an extraordinary wartime rebuke on a bipartisan vote.
It was an outcome that the White House and Senate Republican leadership hoped to avoid. They concentrated on a relatively small number of swing votes, many of them belonging to GOP senators expected to be on the ballot in 2008.
The problem for the Senate Republicans is that they are caught in a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. If they vote for the Warner Resolution, they are going against their commander-in-chief President Bush. Such Senate GOP support for the resolution could hamper the Bush escalation of the war. If the Senate Republicans oppose the Warner Resolution, then they run the risk of facing angry American voters at home, who now oppose the war and want the troops brought home. So we get this Republican delaying tactic in demanding competing resolutions that call for supporting the troops and the war effort.
However, time is not on the Republican side here. If the Senate Republicans choose to delay any debate or resolution regarding Iraq for the next two years, then they are digging their own electoral graves just to support President Bush's salvaging of his presidential legacy. The longer this disaster of Iraq continues on, the greater the anger of the American voter will grow--both against the Bush administration and the Republican Party, trying to obstruct Democratic resolutions on Iraq. The greater the violence, the more that Americans will demand for a withdrawal.
And the Republicans are refusing to withdrawal from Iraq.
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