Welchie's Own, Homemade, Plum Jelly

The front page (not the Dupont Bar) of the Washington Post today says it all: in the print edition we have stories on the Senate ethics bill, one on Art Buchwald, one on the new Guv of MD Martin O'Malley, one on this china missile test issue and one on the issue of the shady real estate deal (just below the fold) that D golden boy John Edwards is now embroiled in. Check out the online edition here. Or Don't check. They're pretty similar. However, there is one difference between the venerable Washington papers print and online editions: the print edition features a 6x8" picture of an American soldier walking through a "grove of date palms near Ramadi in Anbar province." Anbar province? What the...Oh yeah, that.

While the Post's coverage of the topic which will be dominating the political discourse is stuck on page A15, one could say the same about the coverage of what has been going down with Old Welchie regarding his pet issue from Summer 06. The Burlington Free Press lead with this story on usage of the waterfront for, what else, an Air Force jet show. The Times Argus headlines something about Catholic Schools, and the Rutland Herald is talking about ID regulations. All important issues, perhaps, but the elephant is still in the room. Shhhhh....

Behind the tightly drawn veil of the larger media outlets, however, thing shave been a bit more interesting regarding Welchie's upcoming big decisions. The clowns in the blogosphere, besides this predictably rah-rah regurgitation, have been up in arms over Welchie's position on troop withdrawal, the surge, funding, etc. Admirably, some on the left have started to at least discuss whether Welchie will live up to his campaign pledge, exhaustively cataloged by us at WW, to "bring our troops home" "yesterday." GMD follows it here, with a tit-for-tat at the bottom. Cool, right?

Yes. It is cool. We like it when the commentators who speak as the voices for candidates when the candidates can't stay stuff themselves, which is a lot, start to at least get serious about what those candidate then go on to do. After all, if one thinks of himself as contributing to the victory of a candidate, is that person not partially responsible for holding that candidate accountable when the candidateis victorious? We at WW think so, which is why we were glad to see that this discussion is going down.

What we were not happy to see, however, was the degree to which the aforementioned folks have conflated the issues that are at play. That's where WW steps in: we pick up the slack when others don't act. Hey, the kind of rhymes!

In this instance, the slack-picking-upping comes on what is being touted by some as Welchie's getting with the program, the program he read, then copied, on the war. Apparently, a press-release from Welchie's office, which is curiously not on his website, is apprising the media, and those pesky anti-war folks who will be marching on Montpelier tomorrow that, indeed, Welchie will be taking action! You can see the text of the bill he is so proud to have co-sponsored here. Man, it's got all kinds of hard-core claims in there; the word "redeploy" is used, all kinds of stats are thrown in, and there is even a three point plan. Three points, Bush, got that? Yeah!

Predictably, perhaps, there is a catch: this bill just ain't what you think it is, and it ain't what Welchie, or those people who voted for him, want it to be. Will it be enough to placate the anti-war folks, the ones who voted him into office, and the bloggers that cheered them along the way? We have yet to see, but it is certain that this legislation is, as they might say in the critical literature, piecemeal. That's right: tokenism. Can we come up with any other synonyms? You bet your keyboard we can. Just try us.

What makes this clear, if you start to look around a bit, by which we mean not just at the press-releases coming from the D majority, is the existence of other bills, real bills, that would actually accomplish what Welch said he wanted to accomplish during those pleasant trips in the old, red suby with that charming pooch, Smuckers, or whatever his name is. Bills that have more than 36 lines in them. Bills that we are shocked, SHOCKED, that Welchie hasn't signed on to, that do not have the approval of the D leadership, and that have not garnered any media attention outside of the district from which the sponsor of the bill hails. Bills like this one. Read it, love it, cradle it in your burly arms, then cast it away as the dream you once had, but will never realize. Why? Because, as this article in the Marin Independent points out, "Pelosi is reluctant to cut funding 'because there are troops in the field.'"

That's right. It's all there in black and white. Rep. Woolsey, who has a truly bad-ass website here, has introduced the real-deal bill, but the D's want to sweep it under the rug. Here's the thing: the rug isn't big enough to cover this bill. Put it next to the bill Welchie is giving mad props to, and you will start to get the idea. Woolsey's bill makes Murtha's look like yesterday's watered down grits. But do you see Welchie's name attached to the project. In Russia they might say nyet. Here we just say, gee, no, we don't. Wondering why?

The answer, as we at WW have been pointing out recently, is that there is a bigger issue here. Something that says something about old Welchie. This is what it says: any claims he may have once had to "independence," that word from last Summer, are gone. Hey, that's the way it works in Washington. When Nancy gives you some plums, you don't make plum jelly, you make whatever Nancy wants you to make. In this case, Welchie is making the best he can, but "i'm not gonna do what I said I was gonna do" is not a flavor of pie. At least not a good one. What is it?

It's the recipe for a one-term Congressperson.