On MSNBC, Viqueira asserted that political "center" supports Bush Iraq policy
On the February 1 edition of MSNBC's The Most, NBC News correspondent Mike Viqueira asserted that Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (CT) is "more towards the center, more aligned with the president on Iraq." Lieberman announced his support for President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq in a January 15 press release, but supporting the president and his plan do not appear to be positions held by the "center," or the average voter, according to recent polling.
In a Newsweek poll conducted January 17-18, only 24 percent of respondents approve "the way Bush is handling ... [t]he situation in Iraq." In the same poll, 26 percent of respondents said they "strongly" or "moderately" favor Bush's "plan to increase the level of U.S. troops in Iraq by about 20,000," compared with 68 percent of respondents who "strongly" or "moderately" oppose the plan. In a January 13-16 Los Angeles Times poll, 33 percent of respondents said they "approve ... of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation in Iraq" while 65 percent of respondents said they "disapprove." In that same poll, 36 percent of respondents said they "approve" of Bush's "plan to send almost an additional twenty-two thousand U.S. troops into Iraq" while 60 percent of respondents said they "disapprove."
From the February 1 edition of MSNBC's The Most:
ALISON STEWART [host]: The Senate found some sort of agreement --
VIQUEIRA: Right.
STEWART: -- on a resolution against the troop surge. Explain what happened here.
VIQUEIRA: Well, the bottom line is that there were two competing resolutions: one from a Republican, John Warner, and one from a Democrat, Joe Biden. Both of them would rebuke the president to one degree or another, saying that they disagree with the policy -- they oppose the policy of sending another 21,500 troops into Baghdad.
But both of them -- again, the bottom line was they both would have opposed the president. They have now been melded together. This strengthens the hand of those who in the Senate who want to send a message on this nonbinding resolution vote to the president opposing his policy, Alison. But it's still unclear -- we all know it takes 60 of 100 senators to get anything done, to move forward in the -- in the Senate. It's unclear whether they will have the 60 votes to move forward, even with this, in passing this nonbinding resolution.
Russ Feingold, on the lefthand side, says it doesn't go far enough. There are others like Joe Lieberman, more towards the center, more aligned with the president on Iraq, who says it goes too far. So we'll see what happens. It will all be debated next week, Alison.
They don't seem to have caught up with the meaning of the election. They still think that the center is further to the right than it is.
Ha!
Reminds me of when 51% was called a "mandate". Back when 49% of Americans were evidently "out of the mainstream".
Funny, fuzzy math.
The media are conditioned -- they just open their mouths and the GOP talking points spill right out.I thought, too, the election clarified matters, that the rejection of Bush's war and all the incompetence and mendacity that came with it would make it easier for the media to tell the truth about Iraq and about the vile GOP. Guess not. So while Lieberman acts like a Likudite extremist and John McCain does his very best impression of "The Manchurian Candidate," the media mouths the words to the song -- "No Matter the News, It's All Good for Bush."
The center of what?
Maybe they're talking about a different center, like the center of the Earth where trolls or Satan live.
MSM can't stop the propaganda. Lieberman has never been aligned towards the center on foreign policy. As a VP candidate, he was a liability to Gore's presidential aspirations when Gore ran in 2000.
The "center" referred to by Viqueira is The National Center for Public Policy Research - a self-styled "conservative" (read wing-nutty) think tank dating back into Ronnie Ray-Gun's error, err, era.
Yeah, they support Bungle's Iraq "policy" : Go 'gut' and pick up detailed daily instructions on the hot-line to God. (Lately, God appears bored with Iraq, and seems inclined to correct Bungle's initial confusion of Iraq with Iran.)
Feingold is right. A non-binding resolution is a cop-out. It has no power, it's a total sham. Just the politicos blowing smoke at the US public..."Oh, look, we don't like the war. We won't order Bush to stop it but we'll just try to lie to you that we're actually doing something about it." Non-binding resolutions are Congress's way of wasting time and in this case, lives.
Wow! I guess this means that Left-Leaning Liberals now make up about 65% or the country! Hot damn!
Viqueira seems to really relish being one of the Washington Kool Kidz.
On non-binding resolutions, did you ever hear the expresssion "Rome wasn't built in a day"? If you were a baseball player, would you swing for a home run on every pitch? Let's get the first step--disapproval of the presidential policy by a large majority in both Houses--and then see how the public and Beltway Punditocracy respond to Bush's defiance.
Yeah, let's waste time while all those people keep dying. More non-binding resolutions that Bush can ignore will sure put an end to this!