This is almost becoming routine:A nearly two-decade effort to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling suffered a severe setback at the hands of moderate House Republicans just as Congress was about to deliver it to President Bush as his top energy priority.

GOP leaders scrapped the drilling plan in a search for just enough votes to pass another of Mr. Bush's priorities, a $51 billion deficit-reduction program cutting spending on food stamps, Medicaid, child support enforcement and other domestic programs through the rest of the decade. Also axed was another conservative priority, a plan allowing states to lift a moratorium on oil drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts.

What I find irritating about the narrative on this piece is that "moderate" Republicans are being given credit for this. So what if 22 Republicans opposed it--at least 190 Democrats opposed it. The vast majority of the opposition to wildlife refuge destruction came from Democrats, not Republicans. Any portrayal of this as a victory of Republican moderates is thus wildly misleading, to say the least. These are the same "moderates" who put the refuge in danger in the frist place by voting and working for Bush, Cheney, DeLay and Frist. If it were up tot he leaders that the Republican "moderates" successfully helped put in power, the refuge would be destroyed.

Democrats stopped drilling in the Artic Refuge, not Republicans. As Republicans abandon Bush by the droves, we are going to see more and more of these victories. And these victories are for the people who voted against Bush, who voted against Cheney, who voted against DeLay, and voted against Frist. These are not the victories of people who put these people in charge in Washington. These victories are ours.