In the coming two weeks or so leading into Christmas recess,
look for Republicans in both the House and the Senate to begin
trying to set a course for a White House agenda for the new
year.
Chief among the ongoing politics will be keeping things clear
for Judge Samuel Alito’s confirmation in January.
Despite Democratic calls for a filibuster, Republicans in the
Senate, particularly on the Judiciary Committee, remained thrilled
with Alito’s performance in private meetings, as well as the news
reports on his previous writings both in public and judicial
service.
“What we are hearing the Democrats complaining about are the
issues we want to debate. We’ll take Judge Alito and his writings
on abortion or parental notification and we’ll debate those issues
anytime anywhere. We asked the President to give us this fight. We
can’t walk away from it, or give the Democrats any ground,” says a
senior Judiciary Committee staffer.
Beyond Alito, Republicans continue to look for issues they can
run with in either or both houses of Congress. It doesn’t appear
that a major tax cut package is in the offing, particularly with
the economy humming along. The House Ways and Means Committee had
been looking at possible options there. Both the House and the
Senate have said they will debate immigration policy, but that
isn’t a clear winner among voters.
What Republicans don’t think they can do is sit back and allow
two weeks of a session to simply fall by the wayside. “We have to
try to do something before Christmas, before we go home again,”
says a House GOP leadership staffer. “It would be nice to go home
on a bit of a roll going into the President’s State of the Union
address.”
PART OF THE FRUSTRATION WITH the White House has been its refusal
to move up potential 2006 initiatives into this calendar year, when
the GOP might have gotten some good news out of it. The most
pressing issue being troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over
the past month, as Democrats have believed their anti-war rhetoric
was taking hold, Republicans had been hoping the White House or
Pentagon would help them with a troop withdrawal announcement or
timetable. That hasn’t happened.
What little is known about the White House thinking is that it
would like to show a level of stability in Iraq, with a decently
trained Iraqi military force in place before any drawdowns are
announced. According to White House insiders, the President might
be inclined to make a formal declaration during his State of the
Union address. The number being floated internally is 35,000
America troops.
“A lot can change with that number and that decision, as we well
know,” says a Pentagon insider. “A lot depends on what the Iraqi
forces are able to show us in the next month. If things continue to
go well in some of the areas where Iraqis are taking on a greater
amount of their own security, I think we’ll feel comfortable
pulling some of our troops home.”
What no one disputes is that the American forces have done a
remarkable job of whipping up an Iraqi security force in record
time. While there continue to be challenges, the Iraqi forces have
exhibited a level of commitment that has even some American
military observers surprised.
Others aren’t. “We’ve been saying all along that this would not
be easy, but that the Iraqi forces would rise to the occasion,
particularly after the elections, when everyone can see what is at
stake over there,” says a Senate Armed Services Committee staffer.
“While the Democrats have the media focused on the bad news, we’re
making headway. At some point the American people are going to
start seeing some results and they are going to be asking why they
hadn’t been hearing about it all before.”
