Yesterday morning, after their all-night America Last fest, Senate Democrats tried to invoke cloture on their filibuster but failed. Had they succeeded, they could have had an up-or-down vote on Levin-Reed, which would have done little but send a message of surrender to our troops, to the Iraqi people, and to this nation’s enemies.
Although they admitted that the Democrats had been defeated soundly, the Associated Press tried to spin the news to fit their agenda and highlight a few Republican surrender barons:
Republicans were mostly unified in their opposition to sidetrack the legislation, with four exceptions. Three Republicans — Sens. Gordon Smith of Oregon, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska — announced previously they support setting a deadline on the war.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who is up for re-election next year, also voted to advance the bill. Spokesman Kevin Kelley said Collins believes the measure should be subject to a simple majority vote and not the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster. Kelley said the senator still opposes the legislation. …
On Tuesday, Republicans Smith and Snowe appeared with Democratic supporters of the legislation at a news conference.
As a diarist pointed out at RedState.com:
[H]ow did the AP get away with not mentioning Lieberman at all in the article? It’s the little “I” next to his party identification. Lieberman’s an Independent Democrat, not a Democrat, so no need to mention his continuing support for the war!
To their credit, the AP didn’t mention Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders, who also caucuses with the Dems and voted to close debate on the surrender measure. And they did quote John McCain:
“All we have achieved are remarkably similar newspaper accounts of our inflated sense of the drama of this display and our own temporary physical fatigue,” said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, presidential candidate and the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee.
But it needn’t have passed for the Democrats to have accomplished their goal. They want to lose this war as part of their grand political strategy, and this vote sends the signal to all involved that it is just a matter of time until we do leave.
