Murtha's Impact: An Unexpected Twist

Mickey Kaus recently posted fascinating comments from Charlie Cook suggesting that Rep. John Murtha's call for immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq actually served as a tipping point in favor of President Bush's policy. Cook says Murtha's high-profile remarks shifted focus away from recriminations over how we got where we are to questions about where we go from here.

All this is in striking contrast to the conventional wisdom at the time of Murtha's remarks. Right now Google turns up 68,000 hits on "Murtha 'tipping point'" and they're virtually all to the effect that Murtha's tipped the balance against the president. Prominent among them is this Howard Fineman piece in Newsweek which, in hindsight, just looks dead wrong.