Via The Liberal Avenger, this op-ed from the Orange County Sentinel, written by Denny Freidenrich. Orange County is a bastion of conservatism, so this carries more weight than it would in a more liberal paper:

I don’t often quote Washington Post columnists, unless one of them is really right. In this case, Harold Meyerson is just that when he writes, “The Republicans have but two ways out of Iraq. They can either go out like Eisenhower or like Nixon.”

If they are like Ike, Meyerson reasons, they will recognize that the war is lost, and that public support for it isn’t likely to rebound. The Nixonian perspective, Meyerson professes, also acknowledges that the war cannot be won but believes that blame for the defeat should be placed on the Democrats.

“If only the Democrats can be held responsible for defunding the troops, if only the U.S. presence in Iraq can be prolonged until it falls to the next administration (which may be Democratic), if only enough Republicans on the Hill can be dissuaded from voting with the Democrats’ attempts to rein in the war, if only the surge engenders some wild and crazy anti-war demonstrations, then maybe, just maybe, there’s a way to keep the war going without destroying the GOP,” Meyerson sardonically reports.

Talk about wishful thinking. Where is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich when the Republicans need him?

By the time President Bush began publicly attacking the Democrats two weeks ago, some U.S. troops already had been redeployed into Baghdad.

“To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible,” Mr. Bush said in one of his recent radio addresses to the nation. It’s a theme the self-proclaimed “decider” repeated several times leading up to his State of the Union speech.

Whether you agree or disagree with the president’s decision to send 21,500 more soldiers to Iraq, this much is known: First, Republicans cooked the data about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction; second, Republicans were in the majority when Congress voted to invade Iraq; and third, Republicans in Congress sponsored the massive increases in military spending for the war.

All this being true, why then are Republicans saying it is up to the Democrats to show the White House and the nation the way out of Iraq? Talk about political spinmeisters working overtime! If the stakes weren’t so high, this would be laughable; unfortunately, there really is nothing funny about what the Republicans have done in Iraq.

The fact is Republicans got us into the war, and they funded the war. That they never had a plan to end the war is their fault, not the Democrats’. From Day 1, the president said the invasion of Iraq would be the cornerstone of a new policy in the Middle East. I accepted him at his word.

Now I have a few choice words for him: Mr. President, you created this mess so it is yours to clean up. It is time you call what’s left of your Republican loyalists on Capitol Hill and, in no uncertain terms, tell them to quit blaming the Democrats for your (and their) failures. Now that Sen. John Warner, R-Va.) a former secretary of the Navy, has joined other GOP senators in opposing your plan, it looks like he has seen the handwriting on the wall.

Interestingly, Sen. Warner isn’t the only prominent Republican to recently disagree with the president. On Jan. 31, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s chief negotiator with North Vietnam, urged Mr. Bush to develop a comprehensive strategy for the Middle East.

Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Dr. Kissinger called for talks with Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, and increased autonomy for clashing Iraqi factions. The administration has rejected the notion of engaging in face-to-face discussions with Syria and Iran – an idea central to the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group recommendations back in December.

Like an old B-movie Western, there clearly is a new sheriff in town, and it ain’t George W. Bush by virtue of the November election. He still has a starring role to play in this drama, but his name is no longer the only one in the credits, as several powerful congressional committees are now chaired by Democrats.

Most B-movies have a predictable ending. It’s time the decider publicly admits what nearly 70 percent of Americans already know: U.S. involvement in Iraq must end. Now.