A Sense the Senate Is Shifting? We Should Be So Lucky

So it wasn't John Warner at all who was the first Republican senator to publicly say the Prez is doing the wrong thing in Iraq. (Looking through my own archives, I came up with a handful of instances of Frank Rich calling on Warner to do just that.) No, it was Richard Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and possibly the most respected voice on foreign relations in the Senate. So is this a true turning point? I'd have to say no.

Lugar has supposedly been sending the same message to the White House in private for several months. We can only assume that he finally noticed the white House was ignoring him, so he went public. Yeah, that's sure a way to endear yourself to this administration. But maybe Lugar and the couple of other Repub senators who seem to be falling in line behind him are ready to take the gloves off. Or, according to an interview Wednesday morning on NPR, maybe not.

[Steve Inskeep:] Given what you said, the next time there is an opportunity for you to vote on the war, would you be a vote against the war?

[Richard Lugar:]I'm not going to have a vote for or against the war, at least I don't conceive of how this would occur. Most likely debate will occur once again when we take up money for the troops, for the prosecution of Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. I think the majority of the Senate, regardless of how they feel about the prosecution of the war, are not about to cut off funds that would jeopardize our troops in any way. That will be probably an overlying proposition.

Which sounds like you're saying that this is not going to change your vote.

Not with regard to support of the troops. I'm going to vote for the authorization and the appropriations. But there are many, many ways in which the Congress ultimately can influence even the president with regard to this war and we'll have to think through the most appropriate one.

Give me one — before we let you go — one thing that Congress can do.

Well, Congress could offer at minimum Sense of the Senate resolutions. They do not have the effect of law, but they clearly indicate how the country feels through its representatives.

A Sense of the Senate resolution--now we're talking. The White House must be quaking in its boots.