Am I the only one who thinks the whole defunding talk out of Congress right now needs some serious reframing by Democrats to increase public support on their side (and eventually get to 60 votes in the Senate) and ensure the least amount of political fallout now and in the future for redeployment legislation?
I'm not talking about this week's Kos-Obama kerfluffle...
but I'm talking about how all Democrats talking about the Reid-Feingold bill to end the war could do A LOT better job raising public support for it by referring to it whenever possible as a war-ending resolution rather than a war defunding resolution.
It would also make it a lot easier for all the presidential candidates to vote for any and all resolutions like it henceforth if they were able to say they were voting for war ENDING bills and not war DEFUNDING bills.
Because Americans widely support ENDING the war, but a majority doesn't yet seem to support DEFUNDING it. So why should Democrats go along with the weaker term for their war-ending measures?
And to further bolster support for these war ending measures and bolster against the "defunding the war" meme, I think it is CRUCIAL that Democrats should couch whatever war ending bill they put forth with an INCREASE in funding for the renovation of VA hospitals and improved dollars for veteran healthcare, counseling, benefits, etc...
This isn't pork. It makes sense to tie the redeployment of the troops back home to a bump in resources for veterans assistance programs.
We CANNOT let Republicans get away with sliming our candidates with having not funded the troops and it's a winner for Democrats to force Republicans to vote to CONTINUE the war.
Is this a solid post-veto strategy, or am I nuts? It just seems like Democrats have already put out the perception that they voted to "end the war" with the supplemental bill so it should be easier to get the Congresscritters to vote to end the war again than it is to act like they are doing this other thing of defunding it.