Republicans need to win but that victory comes at a price

The Republican Party is at a critical choice point. They have, with few exceptions, supported this President and his Iraq policy valiantly. But if the Republicans have any chance to save their Party in the next election and possibly its future in more distant elections, they would be wise to abandon this President's Iraq policy and join with Democrats to try to salvage something of a bipartisan effort to end this war.

There was a song in the Wizard of Oz sung by the Scarecrow, which seems prophetic at this moment in time. That song, "If I only had a brain", metaphorically should haunt Republicans to rise above the fray, work as they have in past Administrations and difficult times for our country and work for the common good. There is no common good extending this war past the next year or two. It is inevitable we will be out of Iraq at some point in the future. Now is the time to join forces with Moderate Democrats like Senator Jim Webb of VA and others and work out a new course of action for Iraq. Senator Warner and others, who have served as Republican leaders of distinction, deserve our respect and our ears to hear their calls for moderation in policy. But those calls have fallen on the deaf ears of this President who has disgraced his Party and will go down in history as one of the worst Presidents we have had. But I will leave that call to historians. For now, it is time to seize the moment and save the Party.