Rachel Maddow made an interesting point yesterday
about how the president got personally involved in pushing for congress to give him tacit approval and money for the operations against ISIL. He decided to pick up the phone and personally phone GOP and Dems key members of congress to tell them to stop the vote on the continuing resolution so that he could insert something to fund military operations.
Apparently, stroking the GOP reps ego was enough to make them do a 180. The statement by Mike Rogers afterwards was quite striking, same for John Boehner.
I am curious as to whether or not doing this can work on other topics such as the immigration reform. Perhaps the repubs are so full of themselves that if you appeal to their ego, you get somewhere..
Either that or they used the fact the president phoned them as an excuse to fund the war without being criticized by their base. After all,they are supposed to oppose everything president Obama does, unless maybe its about going to war.
I am in the president's camp on this subject. I think we ought to do something but I certainly do not want to end up mired with 100,000 troops back in iraq or even syria. Its a no win situation. If he does not do anything he will be accused of not defending the US interests abroad and being too weak on fight against terrorism, if he does intervene he has to calibrate it carefully or he will be accused by some of his base to be a warmonger.
Fundamentally, that is the difference between sitting behind a keyboard and having clear black and white positions or being the president and having to deal with reality and hence, make decisions that will anger some people no matter what.
