Blurring of Battle Lines in Congress are a Sign of Things to Come in 2006

The last few weeks have seen some extraordinary alliances being formed and then broken between conservatives and liberals in both houses of Congress.

It really got started a while back when Republicans in the House of Representatives presented a resolution calling for an immediate termination of military operations in Iraq. Their intent was to force waffling Democrats to take a stand on the war. As the Republicans had anticipated, the measure failed by a very wide margin. It was a pure political move designed to get the Democrats on the record, but something unexpected began to happen.

Consider: in the last two weeks, there has been a tremendous amount of political bloodshed over the Patriot Act, the proposal to open parts of federal lands in Alaska to oil drilling, the defense appropriations bill, hurricane relief bills, a rehash of last year's disasterous transportation bill, and political dogfights over whether this person or that one is waving a white flag of surrender to insurgent terrorists in Iraq. In fact, Senator Murtha tried to alter the political definitions of "insurgent" and "terrorist." That ploy didn't work. In addition, Congress agreed to include a torture ban in the defense spending bill.

Both sides continued to attach amendments (or "riders") that were too weak to stand on their own to major bills; the oil drilling thing was attached to the defense bill. This lead to the defense department's biggest supporters in Congress promising to vote against their own bills.

It's all one huge mess and it will get much worse as election time nears.