Reid Gets His Marching Orders

So notwithstanding the shabby treatment General Petraeus received at the hands of Democrats on Capitol Hill, it looks like Harry Reid, at least, knows how to follow orders:

Less than a day after Reid met with several leaders of the antiwar movement in New York, he and other Democratic leaders took a hard line against wooing wavering Republicans to their anti-war cause. "We haven't found much movement with the Republicans. They seem to be sticking with the president," Reid said Tuesday.

Reid's session in New York came as he and other congressional leaders were trying to maneuver between two conflicting political goals: Enlisting enough support from Republican lawmakers to force the Bush administration to change its strategy, without compromising so much that anti-war activists will complain of a sell-out.

At the meeting, Reid reportedly tried to explain his limitations and pleaded with anti-war leaders to keep their energies focused on Republicans, not Democrats...

If Reid stands firm to his Tuesday pledge, he may begin to satisfy an increasingly impatient anti-war movement. Five years after the congressional vote authorizing Bush's march to war, opponents still have had only mixed success in mobilizing a mass protest movement.

It appears that Senator Reid got the message: MoveOn has bought and paid for the Democratic party, and expects a return on its investment. A bipartisan vote would be seen as giving political cover to antiwar Republicans, and legitimizing the Petraeus plan for Iraq. Partisan Democrats believe it would be better to wait until March, when (they hope) things will have gone badly enough in Iraq for more Republicans to sign on to their plan for retreat.

If things do not go badly, there is unlikely to be much public pressure for withdrawal legislation. That could lead to even greater recriminations among Congressional Democrats as to who is responsible for losing Iraq as a campaign issue. And as the Hill reports, those recriminations are already ugly:

That tension crystallized when word leaked that Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) had advocated running primaries against centrist members deemed insufficiently anti-war. That comment has provoked a backlash from those who want to reach out to Republicans, like Abercrombie and Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn.).

"It shows what these folks know about the military, to call in fire on your own people," Tanner told The Hill on Tuesday. "It's the height of arrogance to think you're the only one who knows how to achieve a goal."

Tanner and Abercrombie are the authors of the primary House bill for a bipartisan outreach plan - a measure that would order the Bush administration to report on its planning for withdrawal from Iraq.

Abercrombie said Hoyer admitted to him that House leaders made a "tactical error" in deciding not to bring up the Abercrombie-Tanner bill before the August recess. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made that call after a meeting that included Hoyer, Abercrombie, Tanner, Woolsey and other leaders of the Out of Iraq caucus.

"Now it looks like we're catching up," Abercrombie said. "Now everybody's talking about redeployment plans."

Abercrombie is right about one thing: if Democrats did not constantly move the ball, they could at least make the argument that the progress in Iraq has come only through their prodding of the administration. Granted, the drawdown in Iraq is coming not because of Democratic pressure, but because of success on the battlefield--so Democrats would in reality be in the position of finding a parade to stand in front of. Nevertheless it would be better than nothing--which is what they have now, anyway.

For Senate Democrats, one side benefit to their 'no compromise' strategy is that it will keep the defense authorization bill a little more simple and less controversial. If the measure carried a restrictive Iraq amendment, the president would be likely to veto it. This way, it remains possible that the only truly controversial idea in the bill will be the amendment by Democratic leaders to guarantee that aliens currently in the U.S. illegally be entitled to discounts on college tuition and relief from deportation.

That's probably enough controversy for one bill.