Tough Talk From Dingy Harry

If he wants to drive off the cliff, he's more than welcome, so long as he takes the rest of his cut-and-run bunch with him.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday he will try to cut off funding for the Iraq war if President Bush rejects Congress' proposal to set a deadline for ending combat.

The move is likely to intensify the Democrats' rift with the administration, which already contends Democrats are putting troops at risk by setting deadlines.

"It's time the self-appointed strategists on Capitol Hill understood a very simple concept: You cannot win a war if you tell the enemy you're going to quit," Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday at fundraising luncheon for Sen. Jeff Sessions.

In recent weeks, the House and Senate voted separately to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but set an end date for combat in Iraq. The House proposal orders all combat troops as of Aug. 31, 2008, whereas the Senate orders some troops to leave right away with the nonbinding goal of ending combat by March 31, 2008.
The House and Senate are working on a final proposal that can be sent to the president by the end of the month.

Mindful that they hold a shaky majority in Congress and that neither chamber has enough votes to override a presidential veto, Democrats are already thinking about the next step after Bush rejects their legislation.

Being from Nevada, you'd think he'd know when he's playing a weak hand, but his bitterness is getting the best of him.

Meanwhile, although I'm always a bit dubious of Dick Morris, he makes some good points today, and he may be right as to where things are headed.

But Bush will, inevitably, win the game of chicken. Pelosi and Reid have too much sense to be caught denying funding to troops in combat. Bush will make the price of obstinacy too great for the Democrats to bear.

Nobody will want to be in the position of cutting off funding and appearing to undermine the troops during a war.

But the consequences for Pelosi of a retreat will be serious: She'll leave behind her the party's left - who will never vote for funding without also mandating withdrawal. Pelosi will have to scramble and craft a majority with a combination of Republican votes and support from the center of her own party.

The speaker will probably wind up having to vote against the majority of her Democratic members. That spectacle won't be healthy for her future authority or control.

If the Republicans are smart, they will let Pelosi hang by her own rope and will force her to break her party apart by twisting arms for every last vote to pass a funding bill.

Inadvertently forced into triangulation, Pelosi and Reid will be the unwilling instruments of a schism in their party from which it may not recover until after the 2008 election.

It way well be Reid is just bluffing, knowing cutting off funding will have disastrous political consequences. But time is running short and the Democrats will soon be forced to choose: the troops or the far-left fringe of their party.