Liberals Show Weakness, But Not According To Some In Press

J.J. Jackson* | July 19, 2007

When all is hopeless, you can always count on the San Francisco Chronicle to try and breath new life into a rotting corpse.

(07-19) 04:00 PDT Washington — Democratic Senate leaders knew going into Wednesday’s procedural roll call on their proposal to withdraw most U.S. forces from Iraq that they didn’t have the votes to win, but victory wasn’t their goal.

Instead, the Democrats forced the Senate into a marathon 19-hour debate as a way of putting pressure on Republicans for their continued support of President Bush’s Iraq policy, which polls show is opposed by large majorities of the American public.And the Democrats used the publicity they knew their talkathon would generate to spotlight a small group of Republican senators up for re-election in 2008 who haven’t yet split with Bush over the war and whose seats are prime Democratic targets.

To Mr. Epstein’s credit he does cite that only 14% of Americans according to Zogby think Congress is doing a “good” or “excellent” job. But to talk about this stunt as a plus for the liberals in Congress (regardless of political party) is disingenuous. What it showed was their weakness. And it showed how they can’t take a dose of their own medicine when Republicans ban together to use the 60-vote requirement to end debate just like the liberals did for years. And worse yet it shows that they are not really willing to fight as plenty of the Democrats pleaded with Reid to schedule the debate so that they could flee the Capitol and get 40 winks.

Sometimes tactics such as preventing legislation from coming to the floor are valid and sometimes they are not. When they are used to prevent the promotion of liberty these tactics are simply a way for a minority out of power to stall that liberty and wrong. This is what was often done for the decade that the hard core liberals were not in power in Congress even though soft core one were.

When they are done to prevent Congress from usurping the powers of the President as Commander in Chief of the war they are right. Especially when Congress granted the power to make war in the first place. The only person they are weakening by doing these stunts is themselves.

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