If there’s no ancient proverb stating that the victories of wounded and unpopular presidents don’t last long, then there should be.
Here at Newsweek, Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey note what they call President Bush’s “notable triumph” in shutting down the debate about Iraq in the senate.
Yet now we see that seven Republican senators, five of whom voted with their party caucus to shut down the debate on Monday, have now written an open letter to the leaders of the body pledging to “We respectfully advise you, our leaders, that we intend to take S. Con. Res 7 and offer it, where possible under the Standing Rules of the Senate, to bills coming before the Senate” and “explore all of our options under the Senate procedures and practices to ensure a full and open debate.”
I’ll wait to see how aggressively they push this. But as a general matter the writing is on the wall. The president can no more plug the dike against the on-rush of reality in the senate than he can talk or bamboozle his way out of the mess he’s made in Iraq.
