We need another ethics class...

For years, decades actually, the Republican Party has continually claimed that the Democrats have no ideas. Never mind that all of the proposed repeals and reformatting of things like the middle-class tax cuts and Social Security and the Family Leave Act and Head Start and Medicaid and plenty of others are attempts to mess with Democratic IDEAS. But the rhetoric on this never seems to stop.

The example of the last two years is Iraq. For something like 88 Sundays in a row Prime Minister Russert has sat in the Meet The Press studio and asked Democrat after Democrat "But what is your plan for Iraq?" It's a fair point, although outside of the "stay the course!" slogan I haven't seen any evidence of a Republican plan for Iraq either (in fact, there was no Iraq plan from the Administration to begin with; that's why we're in the mess we're in), but it's apparently the Democrat's job to come along and fix what Republicans break with impunity. It's like if, as a kid, you and your brother are at home, and your brother breaks a bottle of milk on the floor, and your mother comes home and promptly says "OK, so what's your plan for cleaning up this milk your brother spilled?"

Tim Russert is your mother in that scenario.

But politically, it's important that Democrats do have an answer to this question. And they've been meandering around one for some time. Today Harry Reid codified it and put it in writing:

Democrats have developed a very clear path forward. There are three areas we believe need to be addressed:

* First, 2006 should be a significant year of transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with Iraqis taking more and more responsibility for their own security. It's time to take the training wheels off the Iraqi government. Iraqis must begin to run their own country. In 2006, the US and our allies must do everything we can to make that possible.

* Second, the Administration must advise the Iraqi people that U.S. military forces will not stay indefinitely in Iraq, and that it is their responsibility to achieve the broad-based and sustainable political environment essential for defeating the insurgency.

* Third, the President needs to submit -- on a quarterly basis - a plan for success to Congress and the American people. This plan must specify the challenges and progress being made in Iraq, timetables for achieving our goals and estimated dates for redeployment from Iraq as these goals are met.

Specific benchmarks, accountability, and the ultimate goal of bringing the troops home when the Iraqis can take over the fight. Sounds pretty good, right? Well, Senate Republicans seem to think so too:

In a sign of increasing unease among Congressional Republicans over the war in Iraq, the Senate is to consider on Tuesday a Republican proposal that calls for Iraqi forces to take the lead next year in securing the nation and for the Bush administration to lay out its strategy for ending the war.

The proposal on the Iraq war, from Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, and Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, would require the administration to provide extensive new quarterly reports to Congress on subjects like progress in bringing in other countries to help stabilize Iraq. The other appeals related to Iraq are nonbinding and express the position of the Senate.

Mr. Warner said he decided to take the Democratic proposal and edit it to his satisfaction in an effort to find common ground between the parties on the issue.

Did the Senate Republicans, the self-branded "party of ideas," just admit that they took the Democratic proposal on Iraq and presented it basically as their own?

To be honest, I don't care. If we do find some common ground in the Senate on this issue, I'm thrilled. America deserves this kind of oversight on a war that has spiraled alarmingly out of control without it. But what I don't want to hear from the chattering class of pundits in Washington, or the talking points regurgitators at the RNC, is how the Democrats have no ideas on Iraq (or anything else, for that matter). This lays that little fiction to rest permanently.