The congress can be assembled, fully informed, within the day of any incident. It is easier, not harder, to formally declare congressional support for a military action. It isn't true, that's all. Get used to it. As long as conservatism is respectable, that is going to happen to every conservative leader.
Respectable conservatives are always upset because liberals, they say, steal their ideas.
But the only initiatives respectable conservatives will pursue are those which do not offend liberals. If they work, and they do not offend liberals, then liberals adopt them. This seems a rather obvious conclusion. If a conservative initiative is one liberals cannot adopt, they scare respectable conservatives away from it by declaring it unrespectable. One of the most obvious things the new congress could have done in 1995 was to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts.