Hugh Hewitt has a pledge you can sign up for that reads:
If the United States Senate passes a resolution, non-binding or otherwise, that criticizes the commitment of additional troops to Iraq that General Petraeus has asked for and that the president has pledged, and if the Senate does so after the testimony of General Petraeus on January 23 that such a resolution will be an encouragement to the enemy, I will not contribute to any Republican senator who voted for the resolution. Further, if any Republican senator who votes for such a resolution is a candidate for re-election in 2008, I will not contribute to the National Republican Senatorial Committee unless the Chairman of that Committee, Senator Ensign, commits in writing that none of the funds of the NRSC will go to support the re-election of any senator supporting the non-binding resolution.
Dean Barnett also has an FAQ on the subject.
You know how I feel that internet petitions are even more useless than internet polls, but this is a bit different in that you have bloggers (including Glenn Reynolds – though he’s not a Republican) and blog readers who tend to be more politically involved and make more campaign contributions than the average citizens making an ultimatum against the Republican leadership. And it’s gotten over 16,000 signatures so far.
I’m not one of them. I’m still of the opinion that the troop morale won’t be hurt because none of them are paying attention to the idiots in Congress. Also, I don’t think the enemy will be encouraged because by now even they have probably started ignoring their impotent cheering squad in America. So I’m all for letting the babies have their bottles (and I think President Bush should say so; actually, it would benefit the dialog in Washington if he referred to Congressmen as “babies” more often). It’s better than them doing something binding to hurt the war effort.
John Hawkins is also against the pledge, though I don’t know if I buy all of his argument that, if we do this, then next we’ll be doing ultimatums over stem cell research and amnesty. The war has always been a special issue (just look at the blogosphere to see all the bloggers who disagree over so many other topics who have united to support the war), so I don’t think extreme measure on its behalf will seep over elsewhere.
Anyway, that’s what I think. I thought I’d tell you about the pledge if you wanted to sign, though, because the first purpose of IMAO is to inform. Frankly, I’d be more interested in a pledge people could sign saying they would punch liberals in their dumb monkey faces as soon as they saw them. Then liberals would take note of all the people who signed saying they will punch them, and thus the liberals will take measures to keep their dumb monkey faces out of public. That’s something that would benefit this country.