Debatable Republicans

The most important moment to me in Wednesday's debate among the remaining Republican candidates was the argument between the great Maverick McCain and Mitt Romney over Romney's position on the war. The talking heads on CNN were interested in it only as an exciting conflict clip and talked about it in terms of the "points" one of the other may have "scored".

But what I saw were the two leading Republican candidates arguing over the highly unpopular Iraq War. One of them (the bold Maverick) was attacking the other for possibly having suggested that the President should maybe have a top secret plan for someday withdrawing American troops. The other (Romney) defended himself by declaring his outrage that his opponent would suggest that he ever might have thought about considering getting the US out of the Iraq War.

In partisan terms, I can't really think of anything that's likely to benefit the Democratic candidate in the fall more than for the Reps to go into the general election declaring that it's outrageous to even think about getting out of the Iraq War. But if the Maverick, Romney or Brother Huck get elected President, it will make for a grim, grim policy. I try to be cautious with Vietnam War comparisons. But this "culture war" theme of "never retreat, never surrender, never end the war" that they are operating on comes out of the Vietnam War period. Only Nixon starting in 1969 adopted the political strategy of withdrawing American ground troops and hoped to continue supporting the South Vietnamese government indefinitely with US air power. Arguing as the Maverick and Romney did last night that we should never even think about an exit strategy is a very different thing, both politically and strategically.

I don't like to focus on trivialities in these Presidential debates. But I couldn't help but notice that the Maverick and Mitt Romney often sat there and smirked while Brother Huck and Ron Paul spoke. And Josh Marshall highlights a moment I also noticed, of Romney laughing merrily as the Maverick criticized him for laying off large number of workers in his role at Bain Capital.

Tags: iraq war, mccain, mitt romney