“Iraq is a black hole for the Republican Party,” a prominent party strategist told me this week. What makes his comments so important is that he is not a maverick Republican in Congress but one of Bush’s principal political advisers.
But Republican opposition has intensified rather than diminished since the president’s speech. What was whispered privately is now declared publicly. At last week’s hearing, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s second-ranking Republican — Chuck Hagel — called Bush’s new strategy “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.”
Republicans can only hope that Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her sidekick, Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, overplay their hands by cutting off funds to U.S. troops in the field. It is a slim hope for now.
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The Democrats should be sitting back, emphasize a forward-looking, positive message of economic reform, health care reform and green energy alternatives. Let the Repubicans dig their own burial hole.
