March 27, 2007

I SEE RED PEOPLE:

Senate Democrats Win Vote to Keep Iraq Withdrawal Timetable in Emergency Spending Bill (Fox News, 3/27/07)

Senate Democrats defied President Bush's threat of a veto Tuesday and narrowly won a vote to keep in place a timetable that calls for the beginning of U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq within 120 days of passage of the measure.

An attempt to scuttle the timetable was offered as an amendment to the emergency spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.

The 50-48 vote to defeat the amendment was a reversal of a vote earlier this month that rejected a similar timetable.


The first one to guess which state's two senators turncoated on this wins a corncob.

Posted by Matt Murphy at March 27, 2007 9:50 PM
Comments

Haven't checked the vote, but if it's not Maine it certainly could be.

Posted by: ghostcat at March 27, 2007 10:17 PM

Nebraska

Posted by: Jim at March 27, 2007 10:20 PM

The corncob should have clued me in. I always did prefer the Sears catalogue.

Posted by: ghostcat at March 27, 2007 10:26 PM

Matt - Well, in 2012 you can hold Nelson to account. While you vote against the re-election of President Hagel. :)

Posted by: pj at March 27, 2007 10:28 PM

pj:

Don't ever scare me like that again. ;-)

Posted by: Matt Murphy at March 27, 2007 10:50 PM

Hagel thinks he's one of the shiny pages in the aforementioned Sears catalog.

Posted by: Raoul Ortega at March 27, 2007 11:33 PM

I'm more interested in the two missing senators: 50 to 48. Who are they? We pay each of them a quarter of a million to do their job, but they didn't even vote. Why didn't they vote? To claim credit when we won, and no reponsibility for retreating?

A principled Lieberman would switch to caucus with the Reps tomorrow. Otherwise, he is just another spineless weasel. I believe he is a weasel more interested to stay in power. Zell Miller was different. He'd rather retire than run as a Dem.

Posted by: ic at March 28, 2007 4:37 AM

ic:

The missing votes were Tim Johnson (natch) and Mike Enzi of Wyoming (family illness).

Ben Nelson probably figured he could slip this one past the voters (with 5 years to wait). Pryor of Arkansas and Lieberman were the only Dem votes. Landrieu must have been squeezed from above (what a mental picture that is, with Harry Reid and Schumer). The only explanation for Hagel's behavior is early-onset Alzheimer's. Either that, or he is closer to Andrew Sullivan than we know.

Lieberman won't switch. If he were serious, this vote probably wouldn't have happened. But what will the Dems do after the veto? Drag out the supplemental funding? Force Peter Pace to go on TV to beg for the troops?

I can see the ads against Heath Shuler now, with the pig snouts rooting through the shrimp baskets (while soldiers reach for empty ammo belts).

Posted by: jim hamlen at March 28, 2007 7:24 AM

You look at the pork list, and you see lots of agricultural subsidies to the so-called "red states". Seems the much ballyhooed Dem inroads into GOP strongholds of the Midwest and Rockies is only happening because the "blue states" are buying off the "open-minded" independents and self-proclaimed moderates there.

Smart move actually, since famers have always sold their votes to the highest bidder. (Look at the Iowa caucuses...)

Posted by: Raoul Ortega at March 28, 2007 12:43 PM
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