[N]o matter what Petraeus says, McConnell believes
Democrats will ignore it. "The Democrats are not going to
have an epiphany. They are not going to be convinced by
whatever the facts are."
McConnell Holds the Line
At least until September.
by Fred Barnes
The Weekly Standard
07/18/2007
IF REPUBLICAN SENATORS abandon President Bush on Iraq in September, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell won't be leading the stampede. Not that he had ever planned to. But McConnell had talked earlier about his expectation that Bush would adopt "a new direction" in Iraq in September, one that might involve a pullback of American troops from combat.
Now McConnell has grown a bit more optimistic about progress in Iraq. "The success in Anbar [province] has gotten around," he said. And this has affected those senators--chiefly Republicans--who are "swayed by what is actually happening" on the ground in Iraq. "That's a good sign."
McConnell now thinks Republicans will succeed in blocking all Democratic efforts this month to limit the role of American troops in Iraq. "I'm cautiously optimistic we're going to make it through this particular exercise with no damaging vote succeeding." McConnell himself has emerged as a strong pro-Iraq voice.
At least until September, he told me, "the president and the military are going to have total latitude." It's in September that General David Petraeus will report to Washington about the success of the so-called "surge" of American forces in Iraq. That's "the critical moment," McConnell said.
Democrats don't want to wait until then. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid kept the Senate in session last night in an attempt to dramatize the refusal of Republicans to allow antiwar legislation to pass by a simple majority, rather than the 60-vote margin normally required for Senate passage.
Speaking on the Senate floor, McConnell rebuked Democrats for breaking their word. They've "tried to have it both ways on Iraq for too long," he insisted. "They voted to send Gen. Petraeus to Iraq by unanimous vote, even as many of them undercut his mission and the morale of our troops by declaring it a failure."
Back in May, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to have Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador in Iraq, report in September on the situation in Iraq. "We chose September because that's when [they] planned to give the president an update on the counterinsurgency plan currently underway The Congress decided in May that one month of a fully manned surge was insufficient to call the Petraeus plan a failure."
But Democrats now want to do exactly that: declare the surge a failure without hearing from Petraeus. "There's no really good argument" for that, McConnell said, nor for the all-night Senate session. "We were elected to legislate, not strut across a stage. This isn't Hollywood. This is real life in the Senate."
Interviewed after his speech, McConnell said most Republican senators are willing to continue their support for the war in Iraq at least until Petraeus reports. "That argument has been strong enough," he said, to prevent serious Republican defections. "Never has a military report been more anxiously awaited."
But no matter what Petraeus says, McConnell believes Democrats will ignore it. "The Democrats are not going to have an epiphany. They are not going to be convinced by whatever the facts are."
McConnell said he doesn't know what Petraeus will say in September, but he expects Bush to be "extremely influenced" by his report. The president has said the same thing, calling Petraeus the "most credible" person in the country on assessing progress in Iraq.
"I don't know what's going to happen in September," he said. But if there's a stampede by Senate Republicans defecting on Iraq, he said, "No, I'm not going to lead it."
Fred Barnes is executive editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD
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