Brownback And The Resolution To Have No Resolve

The Left is cooing about Sam Brownback ... how odd is that? ... because he "knocked down" Joe Lieberman's concerns about the upcoming Resolution To Have No Resolve vote. Here's the passage, from Fox:

LIEBERMAN: I fear that while this resolution is non-binding and, therefore, will not affect the implementation of the plan, it will do two things that can be harmful, which is that it will discourage our troops, who we’re asking to carry out this new plan, and it will encourage the enemy, because as General Petraeus said to our committee, war is a test of wills, and you don’t want your enemy to be given any hope. ...

BROWNBACK: I don’t — I don’t see this enemy as needing any more emboldening or getting it from any resolution. They’re emboldened now. I was there two weeks ago in Iraq. I was in Baghdad. I was in northern Iraq. This is a very aggressive situation. You have sectarian violence of Sunni and Shia. I was in the Kurdish area. They were talking about we have to get the Sunni and Shia together. I talked with the head of the Kurdish group. He said he wouldn’t vote for more troops because you have to first force the Sunni and Shia to sit down and talk about a political accommodation and that’s not happening.

For this Brownback is risking alienating the GOP base? His "knock down" doesn't even mention the effect of a resolution's impact on our troops, and it doesn't address why he feels we shouldn't try to keep from further emboldening our enemy. Just because they're supposedly emboldened we're not supposed to un-embolden them a bit?

All Brownback's statement does politically is separate him from Bush. If that's what he wants to do, here's a question for him: If you want to separate from Bush, why not separate be being more aggressive, more visionary, less encumbered by a history of decisions that are questioned? Why just mimick the Dems?

I have to think that the GOP rank and file will stand by the candidates that are positioned equal to or more aggressive than Bush, and those candidates will attract hawkish Dems. On the flip side, no GOP candidate who's mimicking the Dem position is going to get rank and file GOP votes and certainly won't attract Dem voters away from the host of anti-war, anti-Bush Dem contenders.

Related Tags: Politics, Brownback, 2008, War in Iraq, Democrats, GOP