This guy has to be one of the least Democratic Democrats besides Joe Lieberman. Although technically Joe is an independent now, so Ben Nelson takes the cake. Although he claims he must vote with Republicans because he comes from a conservative state, the guy is bucking the national trend when it comes to important issues that swept the Democratic Party into power. Issues like Iraq, the Iraq war and the mess in Mesopotamia.
When he was asked the other day his thoughts on the war, he gave this abyssmal response:
The glass-half-full conservative Democratic Senator Ben Nelson, who has opposed all but the most non-binding, non-adhesive measures in the debate over how to redeploy, laid out his position in a way that could really be boiled down to one word: Whatever...
Of the push to set a deadline for bringing the troops home, Nelson noted that "Not everyone agrees you can set a date in advance. If you don't, you'll be criticized. But, this is a town where if you say up, somebody else says down. And they're probably both right."
He gently mocked those trying to push for action based on the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group: "The challenge, when you get a report like that, is that there are certain people who think you have to adopt every recommendation."
"We'll take up the Iraq war again and again and again," he said amiably. And get it right eventually?
Eventually....while Nelson hems and haws we have too many troops and way too many civilians dying every day in Iraq. Perhaps if the Senator reached deep down inside himself he might find some principles that would justify getting his ass off the fence and vote to bring our troops home as quickly as possible. Of course he is stuck in the old mentality of being a poor Democrat in a red state. He should really look into getting lessons from Scott Kleeb on how to be a Nebraskan Democrat.
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