Novak: Democratic push on Iraq resolution not about war, it's about gaining political advantage
 Conservative commentator Robert Novak writes in the latest subscription-only Evans-Novak Political Report that Senate Democrats, in their unsuccessful push on an anti-surge resolution, tried to use a tactic often employed by the Republicans.
"Majority Democrats approached this resolution as an opportunity to make Republicans take a vote they didn't want to take," says Novak, "a tactic used numerous times by Republicans" when they enjoyed majority rule.
"Just as when the Republicans did it, the vote on the calendar had less to do with the subject at hand (in this case the Iraq troop surge) than it did with who would gain political advantage from it," he asserts.
Novak adds that ulterior political motives were "even more obvious here," given that the resolution is non-binding, and that "Democrats do not want to take a substantive vote on cutting off funding for the war effort because the issue divides them."
Novak trumpeted that Republicans "won a round" in the resolution battle by "outmaneuvering the Democratic leadership" on the floor of the Senate.
"This was by no means an unqualified victory, but it reduced harm to Republicans and wasted serious legislative time that Senate Democrats would like to use for other purposes," he analyzes.
Yet Novak credits the Democrats' tactic as sound and says that it was somewhat successful. "They tried to vote on the Iraq strategy, and Republicans stopped them," he writes. "Given the war's unpopularity, that is something of a Democratic victory."
Novak adds, however, that Republicans "believe they would have been worse off had they been divided in a simple vote for or against" the President's troop surge. "That would have been embarrassing to the entire Republican Party, as committed as it is now to success in Iraq," he continues. "Republicans prefer to avoid such a vote altogether."
Novak concludes that "the lesson for those unschooled in Washington's ways is that the success or failure of a Senate resolution is often less important than the fact of forcing one's opponents to cast votes they don't like."
A key Senate Democrat and vocal critic of the war had a decidedly different perception of the resolution issue and how the Republicans successfully blocked debate over it. On Tuesday, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) ripped his colleagues for being "too weak" and said that President Bush and GOP leaders are "so out of touch with reality ... that they don't understand that this war is a disaster, and the American people want us out of there."
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