June 17, 2009 05:18 PM UTC

Polis, Colorado Republicans Vote Against War Funding

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• by: Colorado Pols

From the Colorado Independent:

Talk about strange bedfellows. Tuesday night, liberal Democrat Jared Polis joined Colorado’s two Republicans – U.S. Reps. Mike Coffman and Doug Lamborn – voting against the $106 billion Iraq-Afghanistan war funding bill, which narrowly passed the House of Representatives on a 226-202 vote with strong Democratic support. The remainder of the state’s House members, all four Democrats, voted for the bill.

Polis was among 32 anti-war House Democrats voting against the bill, down from 51 who opposed it when it was first introduced last month. Democratic leaders needed to sway some of their anti-war colleagues because of nearly solid opposition from House Republicans, including some who lambasted Democrats last year for “failing to fund our troops in harm’s way” by voting against a similar supplemental bill.

“Nothing has changed,” said a Polis spokeswoman, who pointed to a statement Polis released last month.

“Unfortunately, the positive aspects of this bill cannot hide its underlying premise – funding a misguided war in Iraq and Afghanistan – a policy that I believe must be changed,” Polis said when he first voted against the war funding bill. “At its heart, this bill is about increasing and prolonging U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, which I do not support.”

There are two very distinct stories here, the first being Jared Polis’ vote–consistent with previous votes and statements, he’s no less opposed to the war now than he was when he was a candidate. The liberal grassroots lobbied hard against this year’s supplemental war funding bill, so his vote will cheer the ActBlue crowd–unlike a lot of other Democrats who will now face pressure from the same contingent for voting yes. The anti-war left hasn’t changed its view with the new Democratic president, and neither has Polis. You can give them credit for consistency even if you don’t completely agree.

More interesting in our view are the votes against war funding from Republicans–who claim their opposition was based on an IMF appropriation tacked on to the bill for loans to poor countries, conveniently forgetting how their own supplemental war funding bills during the Bush administration were larded up beyond all recognition to entice Democrats. Obviously they think they’re being clever, but it’s not difficult to paint Mike Coffman as a partisan hypocrite–on his signature issue–for voting “against the troops” just like the GOP did to Democrats. As for Doug Lamborn? There’s maybe half a dozen people outside of his immediate family who don’t already think he’s a complete craven, and that includes the El Paso County voters who will re-elect him next year with no quibbles–dead girl/live boy problems being about the only thing that could possibly change that.

Both Colorado Republican congressmen appear to have voted as part of a concerted GOP strategy to oppose President Obama’s ’emergency’ war funding, but we think they’ve outsmarted themselves: it’s too easy to demonstrate, no matter what they say, that if Bush had been president they would have voted for this bill. Which just plain looks bad, on general principles–regardless of how you feel about the particular issue. Worst case? It could be the only thing people remember…

In short, we’d say the underlying difference between Polis’ vote, and Coffman and Lamborn’s, is much more noteworthy than the fact that they happened to have voted the same way.