Democrats Split Over Iraq, Try to Craft Strategy

Now that their Chairman has toasted their cookies with his nitwit comments on Iraq, the party is trying to find a way out of the foreign policy corner they are in.

Strong antiwar comments in recent days by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have opened anew a party rift over Iraq, with some lawmakers warning that the leaders' rhetorical blasts could harm efforts to win control of Congress next year.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) and Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (Md.), the second-ranking House Democratic leader, have told colleagues that Pelosi's recent endorsement of a speedy withdrawal, combined with her claim that more than half of House Democrats support her position, could backfire on the party, congressional sources said.

After a decisive vote to not pull out of Iraq the Dems go right back to declaring defeat and calling retreat. How do they expect the American people to perceive them?

While the party is divided over the specifics of Iraq policy, most Democratic legislators are slowly coalescing around a political plan, according to lawmakers and party operatives. This would involve setting a broad time frame for drawing down U.S. troops, starting with National Guard and reserve units, internationalizing the reconstruction effort, and blaming Bush for misleading the country into a war without a victory plan.

The aim is to provide the party enough maneuvering room to allow Democrats to adjust their position as conditions in Iraq change -- and fix public attention mostly on Bush's policies rather the details of a Democratic alternative. A new Time magazine poll found 60 percent of those surveyed disapproved of Bush's handling of Iraq.

They sill don't see the problem. They are most incredibly adopting the same platform of the Kerry-Edwards campaign. Complain, accuse but offer no alternative other than "We will do it better." What they need to do is produce leadership by crafting an alternative. The very thing that they say Bush doesn't have they need to deliver. A PLAN.

"We have not blown our chance" of winning back the House but "we have jeopardized it," said a top strategist to House Democrats, who requested anonymity to speak freely about influential party leaders. "It raises questions about whether we are capable of seizing political opportunities or whether we cannot help ourselves and blow it" by playing to the liberal base of the party.

They don't have anything else but the liberal base and it's a millstone around their necks. The have no vision but the acquisition and exercise of power. All their see is political opportunities when they should be offering political leadership.

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