Can you count the number of right-wing talking points internalized and assumed by this Washington Post article? By the same authors of yesterday's awful piece on how terribly unreasonable Harry Reid's all-night Senate debate was.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR2007071902627.html?referrer=email&referrer=email

As many as 70 senators have publicly expressed concerns about Bush's handling of the Iraq war. But few Republican war critics are ready to take the drastic steps that Reid and other antiwar Democrats are advocating, in particular requiring the military to meet firm withdrawal dates.

Oh, the uncivilized horror of demanding legislation that might actually make the President do something different.

I mean, really, just look at this - they've even thrown in the obligatory Republican finger-wagging about "bipartisanship," as if the last five years were a model of Republican fairness toward Democrats, and the current withdrawal proposal is some crazy, fringe notion unreasonably foisted on a so-much-more sensible GOP minority just trying to "work it out" for the good of the country. I also love how John McCain and Trent Lott magically become "many veteran senators lament[ing]" this horrid polarization presumptively created by none other than Harry Reid and the Democrats.

The overarching thesis of the entire article is that Harry Reid has become a mouthpiece for some fringe, leftist, "antiwar" minority, and is ruining the glimmering comity and bipartisanship that have marked recent years, along with the prospect for any sensible, "centrist compromise" on Iraq. That's right, folks, just keep nudging that mythical "center" a little further to the right - nothing to see here, folks.

The Washington Post could save a lot of money just by asking the White House Communications Office to write these sorts of stories from now on.

(from the article referenced above:)

Many veteran senators lament the bitter polarization that the war has engendered between the parties. "I've seen many majority leaders in the past, on both sides of the aisle, sit down with their counterparts and say, 'Hey, here's what we've got to do for the good of the country,' " said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). "We've worked out Bosnia; we worked out Kosovo; we worked out the first Gulf war. In the years that I've been here, we were able to sit down, Republican and Democrat, and work for the good of the country. Obviously, that system has broken down. It's just a fact."

Sen. Trent Lott (Miss.), the No. 2 GOP leader, said the week's negative effects could linger. "There's never any effort around here to try and come together," Lott said. "Comity and courtesy affect substance."