A Washington Kabuki Dance: Why the Democrats Will Blink and How They Will Suffer

A strange and grotesque game of chicken is being played out in Washington concerning the War on Terror. But, according to Senator Barack Obama, the favorite candidate of the anti war left, it will all be for naught.

The Democratic controlled House and Senate have passed a version of the War on Terror spending bill. Each has a time line for the withdraw of troops from Iraq. Each is heavily laden with pork barrel spending designed to bribe members into voting for the bill. Then, before reconciling the two versions into a bill to be sent to the President for a certain veto, the Congress went on Eastern break. Congress will not be back before April 16th, the day after most analysts suggest that our forces fighting the War on Terror start running out of money.

Obama, speaking to the AP, suggested that if (when) the President vetoes the spending bill, Congress will blink and quickly pass a clean bill without a time line for withdraw and--presumably--without the outrageous pork.

``My expectation is that we will continue to try to ratchet up the pressure on the president to change course,'' the Democratic presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press. ``I don't think that we will see a majority of the Senate vote to cut off funding at this stage.''

One has to wonder what the fuss was all about if this supposed historic clash of the Executive vs the Legislative Branch was just a kabuki dance with only one possible outcome. Did the Democrat Congressional leadership actually think that the President would not veto the bill? If they did, they are prone to more self delusion than most people think even Democrats are capable of.

It's not that the Democrats have given up the fight to force surrender in Iraq, perhaps snatching defeat from the jaws of victory since the "surge" seems to be having a positive effect. But absent the stomach to cut off funds, they really haven't much leverage except a vague hope of the public applying pressure. Despite polling data showing an increasing distaste for the war in Iraq, there seems to be little evidence of that happening.