Watching the recent "debate" on the floor of the House of Representatives over a resolution to withdraw our troops from Iraq, I couldn't believe my eyes or my ears. There, in full juvenile mode, were the people's representatives, engaged in screaming matches and threatening body language that was enough to make even Jerry Springer cringe. I know I did.
Just beneath the surface of this fracas, though, lay a larger political problem for both parties. In a time of war and deep uncertainty in the world, the American people are looking for leadership, sound judgment and bipartisan consensus from Washington; instead they're getting infantile behavior in the guise of national debate. So it's no surprise that they're losing faith in their elected officials. While this is worrisome for the Democrats, it could prove disastrous for my party — the GOP.
I saw nothing wrong with my fellow Republicans coming to the defense of President Bush and the administration's rationale for the war in Iraq after Rep. John Murtha, an early Democratic supporter of the war, called for pulling out U.S. troops within six months. But the behavior of some GOP members, and the personal invective they hurled at Murtha, gave me pause and caused me — and many other Republicans I know — to worry about what's becoming of our party and where it's headed.
For Republicans, all the intense, newfound focus on Iraq that the Democrats and some in the media are avidly promoting is coupled with a sharp rise in partisanship and both real and politically motivated ethics problems in the GOP (I consider the questions facing former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to be mostly politically motivated, while those surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Reps. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Rob Ney are very troublesome). And it raises a critical set of questions: "Who are we, what have we become, and what do we, as a party, stand for?"
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/3500967.html