Does the size of your caucus matter?

You show me your caucus and I'll show you mine.

Kevin at Lakeshore Laments,defends Rep. Mark Green's "Victory in Iraq" caucus, which I poked a little fun at in a recent post,"Mark Green wants victory in Iraq."

He notes that the "Victory in Iraq" caucus, although just formed on June 30, has 118 members of Congress signed up, while the "Out of Iraq" caucus, formed earlier, has only 50.

Green started the "Victory in Iraq" caucus as a way "to give he (sic) and his colleagues another avenue to show support for our troops and the good work they are doing in Iraq," his newsletter said.

So it's not just a "victory" caucus; it's also a "support the troops" caucus. If Green called it the Support the Troops caucus, he could have all 535 members of Congress on board.

But some people, like Sen. Russ Feingold, believe the way to show support for our troops is to have a plan and timetable to bring them home and end the revolving door that sends the same men and women back into harm's way again and again.

The numbers in the two caucuses certainly don't reflect public opinion. Here's a question in a Gallup Poll taken within the last 10 days:

"If you had to choose, which do you think is better? For the U.S. to keep a significant number of troops in Iraq until the situation there gets better, even if that takes many years. OR, To set a time-table for removing troops from Iraq and to stick to that timetable regardless of what is going on in Iraq at the time."

UntilSituationBetter 48%
Stick ToTimetable 49%
Unsure 3%

"Do you think George W. Bush does or does not have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq?"

Does 38%
Does Not 58%
Unsure 4%

So strength in numbers in the Congress has little to do with anything except the political affiliations of the members of the caucuses. The Republicans who support the President (not just the troops) want to "win."

Numbers have certainly not been any indicator of the correct position to take in U.S. foreign policy in the past. The Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which gave President Lyndon Johnson the authority he used to expand the ground war in Vietnam -- extending the war for years and costing tens of thousands of American lives -- passed the Senate 88-2 in 1964. Many of those 88 came to regret it.

As my new blogger friend Kevin would say, heh.