Is The Resolution To Show No Resolve Dying?

Robert Novak writes this a.m. at Real Clear Politics:

The Democratic plan was for Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden to sit down over the weekend with his longtime Republican colleague, Sen. John Warner, and hammer out a consensus bipartisan resolution opposing President Bush's troop surge in Iraq. But Warner, who has been making backroom deals for 22 years in the Senate, informed Biden late last Thursday: No deal.

Warner wrote that the "will of the Senate" should be determined in "open" session, not closeted negotiations. That killed the Democratic leadership's dream of passing a Biden-crafted anti-surge resolution by 70 votes or more. Such a proposal now cannot get the 60 votes needed for cloture to end a filibuster (and could fall short of the 50 senators needed for a simple majority). Conceivably, no resolution at all may be passed by the Senate.

The pressure is working. Thanks to Hugh and others for turning the flame up on GOP senators and fundraisers. If you haven't signed the NRSC Pledge, join the 30,000 who have. It's quick, and much easier than having to explain to our grandchildren why the US chickened out and let the Islamofascists pursue their evil while we "redeployed."

Will Harry Reid try to gag the GOP like Pelosi did in the House and ram it through. Difficult at best under Senate Rules. Here's what minority leader Mitch McConnell said on the matter yesterday:

But 41 senators--and we have 49 Republicans--more than 41 senators on our side will insist on a fair process that will ensure that we have several votes, all of which will be subject to a 60-vote threshold like they always are in the Senate. I mean that's--that's routine business in the Senate.

Put nothing past the Bush-haters though. Keep up the pressure.

Related Tags: War in Iraq, Resolution, Biden, Warner, GOP, NRSC