The Zong

The President’s State of the Union address had a real palm-pressing, cuddly bipartisan feel to it at the outset, didn’t it? I mean, there was the classy shout out to Nancy Pelosi and a lot of talk about moving forward together. Dick Cheney even wore a red-plus-blue-equals-purple tie.

Our citizens don’t much care which side of the aisle we sit on — as long as we’re willing to cross that aisle when there is work to be done.

Well, I guess that’s true. That’s why congressional Republicans are crossing the aisle in grand fashion today to vote on a resolution (nonbinding, mind you) to demonstrate in bipartisan fashion that your plan for Iraq blows.

One by one, even the most senior Republicans in the Senate are expressing doubts that the administration’s new war policy in Iraq will work.

“I am not confident that President Bush’s plan will succeed,” Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said in advance of a vote Wednesday on a resolution that opposes the president’s decision to send more troops into Iraq.

Lugar, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, planned to reject the resolution — but not before registering his own concerns. He suggested stepped-up oversight, including seeking assurances from the administration that it is planning for the possibility of failure.

“I say to my colleagues that we are selling our powers short with this resolution,” he said in prepared remarks.

At least eight other Republican senators say they now back legislative proposals condemning Bush’s decision to boost U.S. military strength in Iraq by 21,500 troops.

It is becoming more and more tiresome to hear that opposition to this escalation is a partisan issue, or to hear the president urge congress to support a plan that he himself rejected when John McCain suggested it well over a year earlier, when it might have actually made a difference. Meanwhile, the surge is under way, and any discussion or opposition to the plan seems purely academic.

- M.G.