Representative Stephanie Herseth has decided she will vote with Speaker Pelosi to micromanage the war:
Rep. Stephanie Herseth, D-S.D., plans to support a House bill that would require combat troops to leave Iraq by next year.
The controversial legislation also contains about $4 billion in agricultural disaster assistance for farmers.
Herseth was previously undecided on the legislation, saying she was concerned that the bill would "cross the line into micromanaging" the war. The $124 billion spending bill would fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and require that combat troops leave Iraq by fall of 2008, possibly sooner if the Iraqi government does not make progress on its political and security commitments.
Remember when Herseth supported the troops and was part of a group of "Democrats that are comitted to victory in Iraq and have not been supportive of immediate withdrawal"?
Iraq first became a subject of public discussion for Herseth in 2002 when she was running against then-Gov. Bill Janklow for the state's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
During a debate with Janklow, Herseth said she supported congressional action to eliminate threats to national security. She spoke of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader and long-time villain to the United States government.
"I agree wholeheartedly that we need a regime change in Iraq," she said at the time.
...
President Bush was impressed enough with her views that he invited her and a handful of fellow House Democrats to the White House in December 2005 for a briefing on the controversial conflict. That didn't mean she was 100 percent on board, but she was a willing listener. Herseth told reporters that she believed her position on the war is one of the reasons she was invited to the briefing.
"I think the president reached out to Democrats that are committed to victory in Iraq and have not been supportive of immediate withdrawal. We hope this is an indication that there will be more meetings," she said.
UPDATE: Representative Herseth also gets a mention in the New York Times:
Representative Stephanie Herseth, Democrat of South Dakota, was carefully watching the bill, hoping party leaders would not change it to attract more support from the liberal side of the caucus. As she left a closed-door briefing this week, she said she had decided to support it, largely because it aimed to make the Iraqi government more accountable.
“Immediate withdrawal is irresponsible; staying the course is irresponsible,” Ms. Herseth said. “Some will disagree as to whether or not this is the most responsible, but it’s certainly more responsible than the other two alternatives.”
All of the persuasion, though, has had little effect on Mr. Boren, 33, who is serving his second term representing the Second District of Oklahoma. He comes from one of the state’s most prominent political families and is the son of David L. Boren, a former governor and senator.
“I have been very frustrated with the progress in Iraq, but there are other ways we can hold the administration’s feet to the fire,” Mr. Boren said. “No matter what we do, it’s going to be the president’s decision of how we go forward in Iraq. That decision should rest with the commander in chief.”
When the Democrats took power in November, they mistakenly assumed it was because of anti-war attitudes rather than Republican failures. They also failed to account, I would argue, for the conservatism of the American electorate. As I mentioned last November, the new center-right Democrats that replaced Republicans would force the Democrats to walk a fine line. Boren represents the typical center-right Democrat, who thinks Congress' role in Iraq should be limited. Unfortunately, Herseth doesn't see things that way. Perhaps she's a victim of Pelosi's short leash.
Now that Nancy Pelosi and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party has decided to limit our options in Iraq, she's facing opposition from the Blue Dogs who realize that timetables are nothing but efforts at defunding the war. Boren stated, in the same New York Times article, that "a timeline, in effect, is cutting off the funds. . . . That is not the solution." This is the attitude of the Democrats in the pickup districts. Just look at the efforts by the House Democrats to buy antiwar votes. The new Blue Dogs refuse to vote for anything that looks like retreat. Coupled with their slim majority of only fifteen seats, the Democrats cannot hope to recover from the loss of Blue Dog Democrats and the Out of Iraq caucus, who may also vote against the measure because it doesn't do enough to immediately halt the war.
UPDATE: Tomorrow's Washington Post will report that the antiwar liberals have relented on the Iraq War funding.
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