CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is the target of a new MoveOn.org ad, and you can help pay to get it on the air.
The Kentucky senator helped lead the GOP congressional battle to defeat Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb's plan that would have granted U.S. service members longer home stays before they could be rotated or reassigned to combat in Iraq. Webb's measure would have forced troop reductions, and the drawdown likely could have ended the war.
It's a tough ad that makes use of the word betrayal against McConnell, an ad that is pointed and critical. But it doesn't look to be out of bounds, or beyond the realm of civil political debate. This time, MoveOn delivers its punch above the belt.
By now, everybody knows about the "Petraeus" and "Betray Us" flap that lead to a Senate vote condeming MoveOn's for using ignoble rhetoric to slam the top military commander in Iraq. Ohio's Republican U.S. Sen. George Voinovich voted against the Webb plan. Might he be someone MoveOn could put on its list?
So sad is Mr. Voinovich. He knows to be reelected he must distance himself from w, so his independent, tough guy routine has become well polished. Almost inevitably though, when the votes are tallied, Voinovich is w Bush’s man. This particular vote was particularly egregious.
ReplyDeleteMr. Voinovich led us to believe he might support Mr. Webb’s parity time amendment. Voinovich is generally viewed as a troop supporter. He seems to understand the extraordinary stress w’s war has put on our volunteer forces. Never before have we asked our young people to return to the same theatre three, four or more times. And never before have we expected them to spend more time deployed than they spend with their families.
In the end, six Republicans helped form the majority (56/100) that voted for Democrat Webb’s amendment. Mr. Voinovich wasn’t one of them.
Tough luck, troops.
Hi Bill,
ReplyDeleteYour holding of comments makes this blog appear stale. Self-correction and lively discussion have put a number of blogs at the top of many thinking persons’ reading lists. Reserve the right to pull down any comment that you deem inappropriate, but let comments publish real-time. You’re tough enough.
A fan
Hi Anon 11:00 pm --
ReplyDeleteI had a discussion with a young man about his military career for a long time last night. The deployments are an issue, the repeated tours. I do think that Voinovich is off his game these days, that he has what I will call Mike DeWine disease, the idea that he is a fixture. But so much has changed since Voinovich rose as a statewide figure in 1990, the world and the way that he operated in has pretty much disappeared, or has become altered by technology, a suddenly active and well-organized Democratic party, a Republican party that seems to have lost touch with people under age 30 or so and etc.
Voinovich, who was popular in Ohio, just seems to be doing a long slow fade . . .
Hi Anon 11:40 PM
ReplyDeleteMaybe I will take your advice. I had to moderate because I put some stuff up about immigration decisions in the federal courts and was flooded, and still sometimes get something, from outside the country that is sort of spam-like comments. I have a very interesting court case now out of Ohio about Nigerians and their internet schemes that I didn't write about because I thought it would get me buried. Maybe not, but I was concerned. However, I think you are right.