watch this space
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Particularly in light of my most recent post immediately below, I must give credit to Tom Davis for announcing his intent to vote for the pending resolution disapproving of Bush's plan. And while I'm sure this wasn't his intent, he managed to expose the wide, possibly politically fatal, rift in the GOP. He rushed to endorse the Iraq Study Group's report, the one Bush referred to as a "flaming turd." He even invoked the GOP leadership's boogeyman du jour, jihadism, but only in the context of the kind of anti-terrorism strategy, we should have adopted after 9/11 and in lieu of invading and occupying Iraq. Of course, Davis said that he voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq and still regards that as the right thing to do, but in criticizing the occupation and essentially calling for the type of redeployment favored by most voters, most Democrats and few Republicans, Davis has left Bush and his congressional cronies high and dry. All Davis has managed to do is make Virginia's far right hate him even more than they hate John Warner. Now it's more important than ever to send a signal to Davis by electing Chap Petersen to the VA Senate. If this is how Davis treats his own party, it would be the height of folly to continue to believe he'll treat us any better. He and his party foisted Bush on us and supported Bush all the way through last November at which point Bush became a lame duck. It's too little too late for Davis and his wife.
Comments:
New Republic:
Of course, the easiest path to celebrity in this debate is not Jones-style dissidence or Barrett-esque bombast, but waffling. Virginia Republican Tom Davis spent the first part of this week weighing the resolution's pros and cons and teasing the press corps, telling The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman that it was "not inconceivable" he would decide to support it. As he rose to take the podium yesterday (from the seat he'd chosen within the chamber's staunch Republican section), reporters hurtled into the press gallery to bear witness. Davis, whose pockmarked face looked more weathered than ever under his silky cap of brown hair, delivered a pox on both houses: "From here, the surge looks more like the status quo on steroids," he said, but then he added that "the symbolic resolution doesn't say enough. It says only what some members are against, not what they are for."
After he finished, the reporters in the gallery clustered together in confusion. "Did he say what he was gonna do?" one hissed. He may not have said it, but his recessional made it perfectly clear: Slowly and somberly, as in a funeral train, Davis and his flack wound their way to the left, along the darkened corridor behind the Republican section and through the rows of empty chairs to join Jones and his renegade band.
Of course, the easiest path to celebrity in this debate is not Jones-style dissidence or Barrett-esque bombast, but waffling. Virginia Republican Tom Davis spent the first part of this week weighing the resolution's pros and cons and teasing the press corps, telling The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman that it was "not inconceivable" he would decide to support it. As he rose to take the podium yesterday (from the seat he'd chosen within the chamber's staunch Republican section), reporters hurtled into the press gallery to bear witness. Davis, whose pockmarked face looked more weathered than ever under his silky cap of brown hair, delivered a pox on both houses: "From here, the surge looks more like the status quo on steroids," he said, but then he added that "the symbolic resolution doesn't say enough. It says only what some members are against, not what they are for."
After he finished, the reporters in the gallery clustered together in confusion. "Did he say what he was gonna do?" one hissed. He may not have said it, but his recessional made it perfectly clear: Slowly and somberly, as in a funeral train, Davis and his flack wound their way to the left, along the darkened corridor behind the Republican section and through the rows of empty chairs to join Jones and his renegade band.
# posted by 
: 10:29 AM
: 10:29 AM
Thanks Andrea. I probably wouldn't have seen this. Eve Fairbanks sounds like she has more of a problem with Davis than I do. I've never commented on his complexion. In any event, I have no reason to doubt her account of the context of Davis's floor speech. I saw only the part that C-SPAN archived. Davis seems to give a lot of thought to appearances, probably too much thought. If we turn his wife out of office this November, we can teach him a valuable lesson about substance over form. I wonder if he'd thank us.
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