Calling for a leader among the Republicans

Who can do the heroic Goldwater-like thing and bring down the curtain on Georgie's Excellent Adventure in Iraq.

Via NTodd, Frank Rich:
"The question now is how to minimize the damage before countless more Americans and Iraqis are slaughtered to serve the president’s endgame of passing his defeat on to the next president. The Democrats can have all the hearings they want, but they are unlikely to take draconian action (cutting off funding) that would make them, rather than Mr. Bush, politically vulnerable to blame for losing Iraq.

I have long felt that it will be up to Mr. Bush’s own party to ring down the curtain on his failed policy, and after the 2006 midterms, that is more true than ever. The lame-duck president, having lost both houses of Congress and at least one war (Afghanistan awaits), has nothing left to lose. That is far from true of his party.

Even conservatives like Sam Brownback of Kansas and Norm Coleman of Minnesota started backing away from Iraq last week. Mr. Brownback is running for president in 2008, and Mr. Coleman faces a tough re-election fight. But Republicans not in direct electoral jeopardy (George Voinovich of Ohio, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) are also starting to waver. It’s another Vietnam-Watergate era flashback. It wasn’t Democrats or the press that forced Richard Nixon’s abdication in 1974; it was dwindling Republican support. Though he had vowed to fight his way through a Senate trial, Nixon folded once he lost the patriarchal leader of his party’s right wing.

That leader was Barry Goldwater , who had been one of Nixon’s most loyal and aggressive defenders until he finally realized he’d been lied to once too often. If John McCain won’t play the role his Arizona predecessor once did, we must hope that John Warner or some patriot like him will, for the good of the country, answer the call of conscience. A dangerous president must be saved from himself, so that the American kids he’s about to hurl into the hell of Baghdad can be saved along with him."

Update Gene Lyons:
"Although polls show slight majorities favoring impeachment, the votes just aren’t there. Even so, it’s not hard to imagine how it could happen. Because to allow an arrogant, arguably delusional president and his shrinking band of ideologically driven aides to double-down in Iraq, gambling the “lives and sacred honor” of American soldiers to save face in a misbegotten war also would do incalculable harm to the idea of self-government.

To remove Bush, however, Republicans would have to take the lead. As Bush is currently wrecking the GOP everywhere but the Deep South, chances may not be as remote as they seem.

The cult of personality surrounding the White House has broken down. Last November, American voters delivered as clear a verdict on Iraq as an offyear electorate can possibly render. No Democratic incumbent lost anywhere. Yet Bush acts as if it never happened."