James Carville snidely tries to insinuate that Rush Limbaugh is the moral and intellectual leader of the Republican Party (as if that would be so horrible) in his piece at CNN, “A History Lesson for Rush Limbaugh.”
Last week Rush proposed taking the money going to be spent in the stimulus bill and allocate it according to the popular vote in the 2008 presidential election: 54% to the Dems for government spending and the rest to be spent on tax cuts. Carville takes this tongue-in-cheek proposal seriously and makes this ridiculous statement while wondering what if that had been applied to the the 2000 election:
Heck, had Democrats been able to control 50 percent of the government from 2000 to 2004, we wouldn't have even gone into Iraq in the first place.
I don’t know how he comes up with that, but I did my own math and I have to disagree. When the authorization to invade Iraq passed, Democrats already did control 50% of the Senate. 29 of 50 Democratic senators voted for the authorization.
In the house 39% of democrats voted for it. Let’s imagine that the Dems controlled 50% of the house and give them 217 members instead of the 209 they had. That would have given them 132 votes no (85 votes yea) instead of 126. 97% of Republicans voted yea. If we give them 216 members instead of 221, that gives them 209 votes yea and 7 no.
So the totals would have been Yea: 294, No: 139, the invasion would have still been authorized.
