I don't get it

There was some excitement among various left bloggers this weekend about a statement made by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday. In an interview with Wolf Blitzer (which still sounds like some defensive signal call in football: "ok, team, it's wolf blitz-R"), McConnell said

the Iraqi government is a huge disappointment. ... I read just this week that a significant number of the Iraqi parliament want to vote to ask us to leave.

I want to assure you, Wolf, if they vote to ask us to leave, we'll be glad to comply with their request.

GOP support evaporating! Republicans running away from Bush! Or so, based on their breathless prose, some lefty blogs believed.

Not so fast.

First off, just how does this statement really mean anything? I mean, what, we're supposed to think it incredibly significant that McConnell says that if the Iraqi government tells us to get lost, we'll leave? Can you suggest a realistic - emphasize realistic - scenario in which even George Bush would try to get away with doing otherwise? This is just bluster, designed to come off like he's going to be tough with the Iraqi government. But all he's really doing is setting them up to be the fall guys when things finally do go down for the third time.

MCCONNELL: We're particularly frustrated with the Iraqi government.

So far, they've not been able do anything they promised on the political side. ... It's a growing frustration, I think, among...

BLITZER: What is the problem with the Iraqi government? Is it that they're simply too weak, the prime minister, Nouri al Maliki, or they just don't want to step up to the plate?

MCCONNELL: I don't know what their problem is, but this country has made an enormous investment in giving the Iraqis a chance to have a normal government after all of these years of Saddam Hussein and his atrocities. And there's a growing sense of bipartisan frustration in the Senate over the lack of progress on the political side of the Iraqi government.

But when it came to challenging Shrub instead of the Iraqis, McConnell was suddenly a good deal more circumspect, not to say evasive. For example, when McConnell expressed support for "benchmarks," Blitzer asked how binding they would be. Would they be just goals or would there be specific consequences for specific failures to achieve certain results? This is McConnell's reply, in full:

MCCONNELL: Well, you know, the House Democrats have gone from micromanaging the war to now trying to microfund the war. Splitting up the funding. The good news is that there's a bipartisan majority in opposition to that in the Senate, including the majority leader of the Senate and the chairman, the Democratic chairman of the Armed Service Committee, Senator Levin, both of whom think that splitting up the funding is a bad idea.

The majority leader and I are working to get a quick passage into conference with the House, and a bill signed by the president of the United States before Memorial Day. It's clear that benchmarks should be and will be a part of that process.

Literally no answer at all. (And Blitzer, of course, did not pursue the point.)

Other gems:

MCCONNELL: Well, let me tell you what I think Republicans believe overwhelmingly, is that the decision to get on offense in the war on terror after 9/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq has protected us fully here at home. That part has been an enormous success. ...

What we have to ask ourselves is, if we give up prematurely, we go home, declare it over, will they be back here on the - in our own country? And I think the chances of that are overwhelmingly likely. ...

Well, the president knows what's going on. ... He's not in a bubble, he's not isolated. What he's trying to do is succeed. And we have to continue to ask ourselves, if we go in a different direction, what is it? What is the option? Do we want to allow Iraq to be a failed state? Do we want to embolden al Qaeda and really almost invite them to come back here again?

Funding constraints are "micromanaging" the war. Benchmarks, but nothing about enforcement. George Bush has protected us. George Bush is on top of things. George Bush wants to "succeed." If we leave Iraq "prematurely," it will "embolden" al-Qaeda, making it "overwhelmingly likely" they will "come back here again." And everything bad is all the Iraqis' fault. This all standard GOPper boilerplate straight from the White House press office. I have no clue what people were excited about.