Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Politico:

Sens. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) and Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) grabbed all the headlines last month when they called for change in Iraq war strategy. But conversations reveal that many more Republicans privately fear the war is lost — both politically and on the ground.

This has created a widespread perception that President Bush will be forced to shift plans and begin bringing U.S. troops home in early 2008 after a military progress report is delivered to Congress next month. And that might happen.

Yet there are very good reasons to believe the prevailing conventional wisdom on Iraq might turn out to be wrong once again.

The reasons are simple: the power of the presidency, the anguished feelings of many congressional Republicans and math. In short, Bush is in no mood to yield.

House and Senate Republicans still don’t appear prepared to force him to. And a loyal group of GOP senators are prepared to back a Bush veto if Democrats ever succeed in limiting or ending the U.S. mission in Iraq.

“At the end of the day, all of this hand-wringing needs to be understood (in the context) of how Congress works: There will always be 33 of us, as long as there is not a complete meltdown, to support a military strategy that is aggressive and is not based on needs of the next election,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

Congress has essentially hit pause on the war debate until next month, when Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, delivers a detailed summary of progress — or lack thereof. Almost all the Republican members have said they will withhold judgment until they review the Petraeus report.

“Where everyone is at this juncture, it seems to me, is (waiting) to hear back in September about … where the generals believe we are in terms of conditions on the ground militarily, and at that point make determinations about what is necessary in our national security interest,” said Ed Gillespie, a top Bush adviser.

In other words, Bush will not adjust the strategy if Petraeus says it is working. And there are growing indications Petraeus will report significant military progress tempered by continued political problems in Iraq, according to Republicans in close contact with Bush.

The clearest sign of Bush’s September plan is that the White House has launched a new preemptive campaign to convince lawmakers the surge plan is working.

Significantly, GOP leaders are helping. This started with Bush pulling in GOP lawmakers and then leading conservative columnists last month to argue the war is going better than perceived — and to spread the word he has no plans to retreat.

It worked: Conservative outlets from the National Review to the Weekly Standard have stepped up their defense of administration policy in Iraq.

Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Fla.), a top House GOP leader, said much more significant was an op-ed in Monday’s New York Times by two Brookings Institution scholars, Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack. The two Iraq experts contended that the surge is starting to work.

The White House blasted the op-ed to its allies within minutes of its publication — and the National Review directed its readers to the piece shortly after.

Putnam said the op-ed was more significant than recent GOP defections on Iraq. “It has shifted momentum going into August recess,” he said. “It transforms the debate from purely political calculations of how many votes to prevent a defunding of the war … into an intellectual discussion about whether the surge is working.”

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) showed Tuesday morning how Republicans are still rallying to Bush’s side. “Analysts and commanders on the ground report surge successes,” read an alert the Boehner operation sent to reporters.

Guess who they cited? U.S. commanders — and what he called the “liberal” Brookings Institution (O’Hanlon and Pollack).

A few hours later, Senate GOP leaders did the same: “Good news in Iraq is bad news for Democrats in Congress.” Their releases cited the Brookings duo, too.

Republicans also pounced on South Carolina Democratic Rep. James Clyburn’s statement to The Washington Post that an upbeat report by Petraeus would divide Democrats.

“I think there would be enough support in that group to want to stay the course, and if the Republicans were to stay united as they have been, then it would be a problem for us,” Clyburn told the Post.

“We’re hearing very positive reports from our commanders in the field, and by all accounts security is improving each day,” Boehner said. “That’s what the surge was intended to do: provide greater security to allow the political process the time it needs to work.”

Support from GOP members of Congress in safe districts or who don’t face reelection next year is one thing. But the emerging expectation holds that war opponents will reach critical mass when Republican senators up for reelection in 2008 finally break with Bush and demand that he start bringing home U.S. troops early next year.

Again, there are several practical problems with this prevailing theory.

First, most Republicans remain opposed to fixed timetables and any effort to curtail funding to force the president’s hand — which are essentially the only ways Congress can muscle Bush on the war.

A group of Republicans are pressing for a compromise solution that would avoid timelines by calling for a redefined military role stressing security and intelligence gathering instead of combat.

Democrats, however, have scant interest in middle-ground solutions that would not compel the war’s end. And it is doubtful Bush would back such a plan, because he opposes any efforts by Congress to dictate strategy.

A top Senate GOP strategist said party leaders plan to instruct their members to spend all of August emphasizing the consequences of leaving Iraq, not the need for sweeping strategic changes.

This strategist, who requested anonymity to talk freely about internal discussions, said individual members are shaky but still very much open to continuing to support the status quo if conditions do not worsen this month. August, he said, “is the anything-can-happen month.”

It is true Republicans are growing increasingly uneasy with the war. Yet even after the public defections of Domenici and Lugar, only four Republicans voted with Democrats on a bill calling for troop reductions next spring.

A similar bill in the House was supported by only four Republicans. That means only a tiny fraction of Republicans were willing to rebuke the Bush policy at a time when the politically popular thing to do would have been to turn on the president over the war.

My colleague John Bresnahan says his reporting has led him to the conclusion that the 21 Senate Republicans up for reelection in 2008 will demand a major change in September. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — one of those facing reelection — has hinted as much of late.

Still, it is hard to imagine Larry Craig, Thad Cochran, Graham and other red-state Republican senators siding with Democrats on a bill mandating troop reductions or strategic shifts opposed by Bush. And remember, it would take 67 senators to override a Bush veto.

The only way Republicans will force the war’s end is if voters — especially conservative ones — demand it. That is not happening as quickly or as forcefully as many Republicans anticipated a year ago. Polls show a majority of GOP voters still generally back the war.

This helps explain why the top-tier GOP presidential candidates remain similarly supportive of the war — and is one of the main reasons that Iraq has not become a bigger political problem for Bush in Congress.

Maybe political pressure over the August recess will provoke enough defections to force a change. But it’s not a slam-dunk.