GOP to Play Lucy to Democrat Charlie Brown in Senate

Or, How the GOP Will Punk the Democrats on Retreating From Iraq!

The details:

Republicans remain almost unanimously opposed to any required withdrawal timeline, but they supported opening the debate because they want to draw attention to the decreased violence and other military progress in Iraq since the United States sent an additional 30,000 U.S. troops there last year.

"There's been so much improvement in the situation in Iraq. Since [Democrats] are the ones who want to turn back to the subject, we'd like to spend the time talking about the dramatic improvements in Iraq," Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters moments before a preliminary vote on the withdrawal measure.

The Senate voted 70 to 24 in favor of beginning a debate on a motion to formally vote on the bill, with 43 Republicans joining 26 Democrats and one independent.

In five previous efforts during the past 20 months, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) had not received even 30 votes to bring his bill to a final vote. Not a single Republican had previously supported any of Feingold's withdrawal bills, which have proposed the deepest cuts of any legislation requiring troop pullouts from Iraq.

The Republican move to back the debate on the Feingold proposal caught Democratic leaders off guard. Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who supports the Feingold measure, had hoped the Senate would begin considering a package addressing the mortgage crisis late yesterday. He had expected Republicans to remain opposed to debating the withdrawal plan as well as another bill requiring a new administration strategy on the fight against al-Qaeda.

Source: Washington Post

Commentary

I am looking forward to this, especially since I can now download and edit video of the proceedings. This is a real opportunity to show just how stupid the Democrats (and the anti-war lefties who support Ron Paul) are...and it is good to see the GOP Senate finally showing some backbone.