The War Is Over, Republican Waterloo edition

As a follow up to the post below here are what some others are saying about the House Republicans debacle on the Murtha resolution last night. I'll give you a snip of each but go read them all.

The All Spin Zone: Of Reaching Forks in the Road of History

America hit a fork in the road of history yesterday. The event wasn't pretty, a wingnut was driving the bus, and the passengers are still squabbling. Yet, the bus is headed down a completely different road today than it was yesterday.

What am I talking about? The political kabuki that played out yesterday in the U.S. House of Representatives. There have been many political stunts pulled in the history of this country, but it's hard to point to one that backfired with the ferocity of Duncan Hunter's ill-advised (and certainly, White House directed) counter-Murtha maneuver yesterday. In introducing and debating a simplisticly stupid “immediate withdraw from Iraq” resolution, the GOP didn't just shoot themselves in the foot - they blew the whole damn leg off.

Joe Gandelman: Democrats Don't Bite GOP-Baited Hook As Iraq Withdrawal Resolution Fails

The GOP baited a political hook for the Democrats. The Democrats didn't bite.

And in the end independent voters who carefully watched it all unfold on C-SPAN may conclude that perhaps this was a case of the worms themselves baiting the hook...

In one of the most clumsy, politically transparent and possibly counterproductive political operations since the GOP Congress inserted itself into the Terri Schiavo affair, Republicans set up what at first glance looked like a major political trap:

Wouldn't Democrats, fearing facing the wrath of their party's leftist base, vote for a resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal from Iraq? Wouldn't it accentuate splits within the Democratic party? Wouldn't it then set the Democrats up to be on the record as the party that wants to "cut and run" from Iraq (a phrase broadly used by many in the GOP now to define those who seek a withdrawal — ignoring the fact that a general is now suggesting the same thing to the Bush administration)?

Also Also: Bad Murtha Fuckers

The House today voted 403-3 to defeat a bill calling for a literally immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Of course the headlines essentially read what the GOP wanted them to read in a hopeful attempt at jujitsu: that a bill to pull troops--something a majority of Americans now supports in some abstract form--was unanimously rejected by both sides of the aisle. But it might have been helpful to put the bill text closer to the top of these stories:

"It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately."

Not heavy on detail, is it? Murtha's own bill gave no such immediacy other than ASAP, but that's not what the GOP had the House vote on. So the bill itself was a sham, quickly recognized as such by Minority leadership and given the heave ho. But the far more controversial event occurred during the debate, as new Rep Jean Schmidt (the winner in the Hackett squeaker) read into the record a statement supposedly from a constituent, calling Murtha a coward.

This is going to turn out to be a Terri Schiavo moment for the Republicans.