Sunshine Senators

From the Editors of National Review Online:

If the Bush administration is under any illusions about the sorry political state of the Iraq war, yesterday's Senate action should dispel them. A Democratic proposal for a timetable for withdrawal was beaten back 58-40, but Republicans passed their own version to force the administration to make quarterly progress reports to Congress and express its sense that 2006 should be the year when Iraqi security forces take the lead. Substantively, this might not have been particularly objectionable, but politically it was calamitous. It continued the narrative of Bush losing even his own party on Iraq — which is how the headlines have played the vote — and showed that Republicans are afraid to have a fight with Democrats even on ground that should favor them.