Redstate

Posted at 10:53am on May 16, 2008 Present Instead of No

By Erick

Having blasted the House GOP this week, let me praise them today.

They got fed up with the Democrats playing games with the lives of our troops. The Democrats, in pushing their war supplemental, highlighted their real priorities. In order, they were tax increases on the entrepreneurial class, spending on liberal social programs, tying the hands of the Commander-in-Chief, and screwing the war criminals in Iraq troops.

The GOP did the only thing left they could do -- they refused to participate in the game. Instead of even voting no, they voted present. It had a lot of people scratching their heads, but these people paid attention and asked why.

And, again, the answer is simple: the Democrats are playing games with the lives of our soldiers in harm's way. They do not want to fund the troops, but they know they have to. So they are trying to fund everything else first and daring the President to veto the funding.

He will. He should. And the GOP continues to be the party that stands up for the troops. Here's Roy Blunt on the matter:

the bottom line on this week's bill was it was never designed to fund the troops. The Democrats knew that this would not be a bill signed into law. It was designed to be a package that used the troops to do other spending that they know they can't get done without the troops.

Republican members voted present on that section of the bill. We then demonstrated we had the veto-sustaining strength that everybody knew we had on the other two sections of the bill.

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