Initially, Russ Feingold said that he’d fight the FISA legislation currently making its way through the Senate but that he wouldn’t filibuster it. When his Nutroots puppeteers heard that, they changed his mind fast. Now he’s singing a totally different tune. Here’s some of the new ‘lyrics’:

The Wisconsin Democrat voiced considerable frustration with members of his own party, who, he says, have enabled the sweeping new legislation. “Sen. Dodd and I and Sen. Leahy are going to do everything we can to stop this mistake,” Feingold noted, referring to fellow opponents of the bill. “But I’m extremely concerned that not only virtually every Republican… but far too many Democrats will vote the wrong way.”

“We met with Sen. Reid on Friday morning,” said Feingold, speaking of himself and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., “and we indicated our desire that this thing not just be jammed through, we’ll be requiring key procedural votes and we’ll also be taking some time on the floor this week to indicate the problems with this legislation.”

While Feingold hasn’t changed his mind on the legislation being awful, he’s changed his mind on whether he’d attempt to stop it with a filibuster and through procedural votes. Democrats can’t be seen as not getting a FISA reform bill to President Bush’s desk before the current set of warrants expire.

If those warrants expire, Republicans will spend August telling the voters that Democrats put their trial attorney allies’ priorities ahead of national security. It’s unlikely that Democrats will want to be put in that defensive posture for an entire month, especially since they’re already in a defensive position on oil exploration.

That’s the type of position they can’t afford to be in. Picture the RNC ads talking about how Democrats are making America vulnerable to terrorist attacks at the same time that they’re doing nothing to ease Americans’ pain at the pumps.

Being on the wrong side of the prosperity and security issues isn’t the way to win elections. I recall a poll in 1984 that showed Walter Mondale winning all but 2 issues. The bad news is that the issue he lost were prosperity and national security. We saw how that turned out.

If Feingold persists in filibustering this bill, then he’ll put pressure on Barack Obama. If Obama votes to continue the filibuster, he’ll rightly be called soft on national security. If he votes to limit debate, he’ll rightly be accused of flip-flopping on the issue.

Captain Ed says that it’s possible that Sen. Obama will be campaigning “in some town hundreds of miles from DC.” If he does that, Republicans and the Right Blogosphere will blast him for not having the spine to make a decision on the most important national security issue of this session. They’ll rightly accuse him of being a spineless politician that doesn’t want to get pinned down on the thorniest issues of the day.

That isn’t being a leader. That’s being spineless. These days, spineless doesn’t sell.

Technorati: FISA, Immunity, Intelligence, Reform, Russ Feingold, Christopher Dodd, Obama, National Security, Prosperity, Election 2008

Cross-posted at California Conservative