Via Michael Crowley at TNR’s The Plank, Dana Milbank mocks the incoherence of GOP talking points on the Democrats’ anti-“surge” resolution:

There was good reason for this anxiety. As head of the House Republican Conference, the 32-year-old redhead [Rep. Adam Putnam, R-FL] is leading his caucus into a public-opinion meat grinder: supporting President Bush’s increase of U.S. troops in Iraq, against the wishes of more than 60 percent of Americans. Worse, he is leading them with a pair of somewhat contradictory arguments: (a) that the Democrats’ resolution opposing Bush’s Iraq buildup is a meaningless gesture, and (b) that the Democrats’ resolution will cause the end of civilization as we know it.

“This is a rather toothless 97 words,” Putnam began in his floor speech, calling the proposal “a narrow nonbinding resolution that misses the bigger picture.” Minutes later, he changed his view. “The majority would have us consider a resolution that puts us one day closer to handing militant Islamists a safe haven the size of California.”

So which one is it: toothless or catastrophic?

Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) wasn’t sure. In his floor speech, he called the resolution “nonbinding” six times, labeling the resolution “a political charade lacking both the seriousness and the gravity of the issue that it’s meant to represent.” And yet, he also thought the resolution “is the first step toward abandoning Iraq by cutting off funding for our troops that are in harm’s way.”

Neither had Minority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) found harmony between the competing talking points. “This resolution just says enough not to say anything at all,” he judged. In another breath, however, he called it a “first step to cutting off funding for the dangerous mission our troops face” and a debate that “bolsters those radical terrorists whose sole goal is to destroy America.”

The Republican complaints brought to mind the Woody Allen joke about two old ladies at a Catskills resort. “One of ’em says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know, and such small portions.’ “