NBC's Andrea Mitchell Confirms Her Scoop: GOP Senators Will Bail On Bush If "Surge" Doesn't Show Progress By Late Summer
April 3, 2007 -- 9:58 AM EST // // Post a Comment
Via Joan Walsh, NBC's Andrea Mitchell is confirming her scoop that (a) moderate Republican Senators don't think the "surge" will work but temporarily supported it anyway; and (b) will withdraw their support for the war if the "surge" doesn't show progress by late August.
If true -- and Mitchell seems to be saying that she has it on good authority -- this would be very significant, for two reasons. First, it would suggest that moderate Republican Senators backed escalation even though they didn't think it will work; and second, it suggests that within mere months we could see a serious crackup of the GOP unity that's holding the line against the Dem Congressional leadership's efforts to grind the war to a halt.
Mitchell reiterated this scoop on Hardball last night -- check out the video we've posted:
Here's a transcript:
MATTHEWS: What is Petraeus, General Petraeus saying over there about -- what`s he been telling people about that?MITCHELL: Well, it`s a good thing you bring that out. He`s been telling senators -- he had, in fact, a closed-circuit briefing for the senators, Democrats as well as Republicans, and he is telling them that he will report some progress, that he hopes to be able to report some progress by August. And in turn, what many Republican senators are saying, Chris, is that if there isn`t real progress by the end of the summer, that`s when there are going to really break with the president, that they`re going along with this surge out of respect for the generals. But in his closed briefing -- they went over to the Pentagon and had that briefing, Democrats as well as Republican senators, and he made it clear to them that he thinks he can report some progress.
Mitchell said something very similar over the weekend on the same program, reporting that GOP Senators are basically saying privately that "the president has until August, until Labor Day. After that, if it doesn’t work, they’re running." Subsequently, Joe Klein said in an interesting post that he doubted that General Petraeus would have given himself a deadline given the realities of counterinsurgency tactics. As you can see, Mitchell is now sticking by her story.
This is interesting enough to warrant several follow-up questions for clarification. Did Mitchell report these key facts concerning the GOP Senators on NBC? Did a large enough number of GOP Senators say they were prepping to bail for this to represent something very significant? What was the true nature of their warning to Petraeus? Was it, "If this doesn't work by late August, we're definitely out of here, and we're sticking together on this"? Or was it more along the lines of, "Hey, we'd love to see some progress by Labor Day but if not, we should grab a coffee and chat about this again"? Did these Senators confide outright that they saw no hope for the "surge" to work but backed it anyway?
I've got a call into Mitchell to see if she's willing to shed further light on what she claims to know, and I'll keep you posted. More from Think Progress.
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