What's Plan B?

President Bush vetoed the Iraq Accountability Act last week, proclaiming that putting an "artificial timetable" on ending the war would embolden our enemies, or something like that, and he took the unsurprising tactic of blaming the Democrats into turning the war into a partisan issue for political gain. Of course, that's something he would never do. (He leaves that to Dick Cheney.)

But it looks as if he's going to have to include his own party as the allies of the evil-doers from now on.

Congressional leaders from both political parties are giving President Bush a matter of months to prove that the Iraq war effort has turned a corner, with September looking increasingly like a decisive deadline.

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House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who has taken a hard line in Bush's favor, said Sunday, "By the time we get to September, October, members are going to want to know how well this is working, and if it isn't, what's Plan B."

Democrats were crowing yesterday over what they saw as the clearest signs yet that Republican unity behind the president is beginning to crack. And House Democrats are preparing to up the ante with new legislation that would demand a turnaround in the war by the end of July.

As you'll recall, Plan B has been that Plan A -- the "surge" -- has to work. That's it. And now the Republicans, who know better than anyone how to read polls, are finally getting it that the war, as Sen. Harry Reid noted to much ballyhoo last month, is lost and that the same could be said for their chances in 2008 if they're still tied to Bush and the war.

Hey, fighting the global war on terror, spreading freedom and democracy to the Middle East, and making the world safe for ExxonMobil all sounded great when they came up with it as the backbone of their plan for the permanent Republican majority, but now the jig is up, and when it comes to making the choice between standing with the guy whose poll numbers are lower than a gopher's basement and putting their own ass on the line for re-election, you know which way they'll go.

Or is it too much to hope that they're actually seeing that they have screwed it up royally and are trying to actually do the right thing?