Late Night Iraq Vote: Was It Worth It?

Friday afternoon, news broke on the Drudge Report that the House GOP had called for an eleventh hour vote on a resolution to pull the troops out of Iraq immediately. I know what you're thinking, "Are they crazy?!" What they were doing was basically calling the Democrats out, specifically PA Rep John Murtha, who earlier in the week blasted the President on not having a pull-out plan. The Republicans made a daring, and dangerous policy move, by calling for a vote on pulling out the troops immediately-- their plan was to catch the Dems flip-flopping on their policy.

Did it work? Yes and no... after an hour or so of debate on a resolution to pull out the troops, the idea was shot down 403 to 3. So in that sense, the GOP won, and proved their point. But they didn't exactly go about it the right way. The problem lies with the resolution, which wasn't Murtha's original resolution. Instead, it was a reworded, non-binding resolution written by a House Republican. This immediately made the whole think look like a political stunt. If they really wanted to make a point, they would have called Murtha's resolution to the floor to vote.

That isn't to say that they didn't make a solid statement. To merely dismiss Friday's vote as a political stunt isn't good enough, especially considering all of the grandstanding and bullplopping that the Dems have pulled over the last three months. What it did do was show that the Republicans may be down but they aren't out. Over the past few weeks, the GOP'ers have begun fighting back (and they should have started alot sooner). With the President's stellar Veteran's Day speech behind them, and some fiery words from Cheney, the House and Senate are beginning to wake up. Tonight's debate saw some great speeches by House Republicans, and ultimately resulted in a huge Nay for the resolution. While the Democrats are saying they merely voted "no" to get rid of such nonsense, I have a feeling that this trend of voting isn't very far from how things would have turned out with Murtha's resolution.

For a full report on Friday night's events, check out Breibart.com