33 Million Troop Surge Fans Can't Be Wrong!
Responding to yesterday's post about Harry Reid (apparently) endorsing a Bush-McCain plan for sending more troops to Iraq, commenter Madpad speculated:
After lettin[g] Republicans galvanize the idea that Democrats are soft on defense, Reid & company are signing on for the same reason they rolled over on the war.
Simply put, they don't want to look like pussies.
That's a tempting analysis of the loopy Iraq debate we're having right now. But the fact was that when Democrats and Republicans-except-Lincoln-Chafee voted for the Iraq war, support for a war on Iraq hovered around 70 percent. What's the support for a "troop surge"? It's buried in this CNN story:
Support for the conflict fell to a new low of 31 percent in the poll, conducted Friday through Sunday by Opinion Research Corporation, while a record 67 percent expressed opposition to the nearly 4-year-old war.
Nearly three-quarters said Bush administration policy needs a complete overhaul or major changes. But only 11 percent of those polled backed calls to send more American troops to Iraq, as President Bush is said to be considering.
Eleven percent. That's about 1/3 as many people as favor the no-strings legalization of marijuana. Suffice to say that Washington political classes don't spend a lot of time discussing ideas that almost 9 in 10 Americans oppose. Why are they considering this one?
