Thursday Roundup: Second Verse, Same as the First

Today President Bush will announce a plan to withdraw some 30,000 troops from Iraq by next summer. If this seems like a sort of ham-fisted compromise in a situation where a compromise should look like something else entirely, it is.

That withdrawal would be the end of the surge, which is currently underway and the success of which is hotly contested — if you read the news or watched TV this week, you know this to be true. Harry Reid has plainly called this plan "more of the same," and that's what it is.

Imagine, if you will, a plan that removes troops from Iraq, but leaves the overall troop level right where it was before this surge foolishness was concocted. Then, at the end of that plan, the countdown to leaving the White House is what, 5 months? If this doesn't send the signal that Bush has no intentions of leaving Iraq while he is President, I don't know what will.

Speaking of getting out of Iraq, guess who has a new plan for just such a thing? Barack Obama, that's who. The Senator fired off some questions for Petraeus during the hearings and yesterday, in Iowa, unveiled his plans, which center around "removing American combat troops at a pace of one or two brigades a month, which is about twice as fast as American commanders in Iraq have deemed prudent." You can guess that those in favor of the surge argued against it, and more debate on his plan will likely follow in the coming days.

In a sidenote on the Petraeus Report reports, Nick Lampson was cited by the Houston Chronicle as a guy trying to make sense of it all in a bi-partisan way. The article also includes a rundown of how other Texas lawmakers feel about the Iraq War and where they think things are headed.

I can tell you where things are headed for Senate Republicans: down those mystical tubes, and not the intertubes, either. The New York Times thinks Senate Democrats have a healthy advantage, even though we are quite a ways out from the election. Mark Warner, former governor of Virginia and one-time possible Presidential candidate, has set his sites a little lower than the White House and decided to run for the Senate seat from which Republican John Warner, no relation, will resign. Warner is a terrific candidate for that seat, which is now in play and in danger of falling out of the GOP column.

Oh hey, Pennsylvania has started the process of suspending Scooter Libby's law license. I don't really have commentary on that, but it's been a while since we had some Scooter News so I thought I would include this item.

Governor Rick Perry was in California recently, and he took a decidedly national bent when he attacked Democrats during his speech to their state Republican convention. He had disparaging remarks for plenty of people:

Pelosi?

"Let's make sure the Nancy Pelosi speakership is just an asterisk in the history of our country."

Hillary Clinton's effort to follow her husband as president?

"We must move heaven and earth to make sure we never see another Clinton in the White House."

He's pledging to beat the streets all over America for the GOP cause, and that seems odd for a guy with no national ambitions. Right?