War is not the issue?

Iraq.
That’s what I woke up thinking about today. McCain seems to be the only candidate who’s really comfortable talking about it. Hell, he seems to almost want to talk about it.
And while it was a a tad disingenuous the way he spun Romney’s timetable talk last night, I think McCain did have a point. From an ABC News report from last March:

When asked a similar question on CBS’s “Early Show,” Romney responded, “Well, I wouldn’t publish [a timetable] for my adversaries to see,” advocating instead “a series of milestones, timetables as well, to measure how well they’re doing.”
“But,” Romney said, “that’s not something you publish for the enemy to understand, because of course they could just lay in the weeds until the time that you’re gone. So these are the kinds of things you do privately, not necessarily publicly.”
While Romney’s Tuesday call for “milestones” is nothing new, he has mostly shied away in the past from employing the more politically charged terminology of “timetables.”
When asked if Romney’s Tuesday morning show comments represented something new for the Republican presidential hopeful, Romney spokesman Kevin Madden described them as “consistent with his previous statements about milestones and metrics towards success in Iraq.”

The argument really isn’t over timetables, but whether they should be kept in the closet, and I think McCain’s point is that Romney had been acting ashamed of the war. As ABC put it, he was trying to create distance between himself and Bush:

While Romney’s embrace of timetable terminology seemed to put some distance between himself and Bush, the former Massachusetts governor also made it clear that he does not support efforts on the part of the Democratic Congress to establish a public timetable.

I think he also made it clear that he’s not all that comfortable with the war. Not that I blame him. I’m not a war blogger, and while I support the war I don’t write about it as much as I should.
I am sick and tried of the contentiousness, though, and what I’m really sick of is the way the Democrats have been yelling and screaming about Iraq all these years. This has caused many Republicans to act guilty, and avoid talking about the war. (The deer caught in the headlights syndrome. Say what you will about McCain, but he’s no deer caught in the headlights.)
I’m not sure McCain takes Iraq off the table, but if he’s the GOP candidate, the Democrats are most likely going to want to find something else to talk about.
I’m sure they’ll think of something, but what?
Immigration, perhaps? I doubt it.
Maybe they’re hoping for a recession.


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