Both the blogosphere and mainstream pundits are having a hot debate about the Senate vote requiring that half of the proposed $20-billion in reconstruction assistance to Iraq take the form of a loan, not an outright grant.
For the record, the Republican Senators who voted against the President's position were: Sam Brownback (Kansas), Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Colorado), Saxby Chambliss (Georgia), Susan Collins (Maine), Olympia Snowe (Maine), John Ensign (Nevada), Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska).
All Democrats voted against the President except for Joseph Biden (Delaware), Maria Cantwell (Washington), Daniel Inouye (Hawaii), and Zell Miller (Georgia). Democrats Robert Byrd (West Virginia) and Joseph Lieberman (Connecticut) did not vote.
Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison was an early supporter of the loan idea, but backed off at the request of the White House.
Lindsey Graham typified the muddled thought-process of the Republican deserters, failing to appreciate the implications of siding with Tom Daschle and friends:
"We've given lives and we've given money, all we're asking is some of that money be paid back when they can afford to pay it back," Mr. Graham said. "I see this as the first step — sort of a wake-up call that we need to tend to the domestic aspects of this more."
Blogger Spoons has a roundup of what might constitute the case against outright grants.
But the estimable Donald Sensing makes a passionate and persuasive case for the idiocy of the loan idea.
We took the place over. We want to establish a non-aggressive, representative government there.And now our Senate wants to make the Iraqis pay for it.
That is worse than merely miserly. It is punitive. It is effectively equal to making Iraq pay reparations. We didn’t even make Japan and Germany do that after the second world war because the ruinous reparations imposed on Germany after World War I contributed to the rise of Hitlerism there.
It doesn’t matter that Iraq will never actually pay the money back (the debt will be quietly forgotten by the Bush administration and later Congresses). Politics is a realm of symbolism, and the symbolism of the United States Senate is now clear: "Iraq, up yours."
My own take is that we should keep in mind that loan idea was hatched by Democrats who do not support the President and either (a) don't care if we fail in Iraq, (b) want us to fail in Iraq, or (c) don't have the vision to understand how to succeed in Iraq. On that basis alone, loans are Bad.
The Republican deserters are mostly fence-sitters like Snowe and Collins, or are just pols spooked by media-driven polls showing many average voters don't support the President's plan. Lindsay Graham and the others mostly lack political fortitude and are oblivious to the consequences of de facto support for the President's opponents. Sad.
However, this is a useful reminder of the importance of keeping a decisive edge in political contests. High poll numbers are like big electoral margins: they push opponents back and make it much easier to keep the waverers in line. And there are always waverers, ready to jump when the going gets tough.
Posted by Alan at October 18, 2003 11:15 AM