They Want It Both Ways

Dana at CSPT has an interesting post about the Democrat will to cut and run. His point: it isn't in the Democrats' interest to leave Iraq because then they can't use it as a campaign issue in '08.

Tas at Liberal Avenger is hopping mad that--gasp again!--Democrats are behaving like politicians. That is, they made a bunch of campaing promises they have no intention of keeping.

I can understand tas's frustration. If I had voted for someone expecting them to keep their promises and living up to their party platform, I'd be a little pissed off, as well. Oh, wait. I did do that. And yes, I was pretty pissed off when the Republicans started behaving like politicians, too.

The thing to keep in mind is that it's all politics for these people. Try to figure out how a particular issue will work to the party's advantage and it becomes easier to understand what the politicians are doing.

Take the minimum wage flap. As Dana notes in this post, the Democrats could have had the exact same raise in the minimum wage last year...if they could stomach approving an end to the death tax. But Democrats know which side of the bread they put butter on and it was way more important to demagogue the death tax issue rather than raise the minimum wage for all those poor people they are so concerned about.

Now that Republicans are in the minority, they have absolutely no power to do anything in the House, as Rush Limbaugh has pointed out. Unlike Republicans in the last session, Democrats aren't interested in sharing any power whatsoever with the minority. And without affirmative action by the Democrats in the House, the Republicans can't do anything at all there to alter or block legislation.

This isn't true in the Senate where Republicans can raise Ted Kennedy's blood pressure to dangerous levels every day for the next two years because Republicans can filibuster. It's a wonderful mechanism our Founding Fathers created, and I am hopeful the Republicans will remember how to use it effectively.