Dan Froomkin - Bush Daring Dems on Iraq - washingtonpost.com

ush Daring Dems on Iraq

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, February 6, 2007; 12:50 PM

The White House's political strategy on Iraq is coming into focus.

Faced with a bipartisan rebellion against the decision to put more troops in harm's way, White House political aides are concentrating less on winning support for the president's policies -- and more on trying to maneuver the Democrats into taking action they can depict as cutting off funds to the troops.

The new strategy was neatly executed by Senate Republicans yesterday, after much consultation with the White House. They prevented the Democratic leadership from bringing to the floor a nonbinding resolution that would have put a solid majority of the Senate -- not just Democrats, but several Republicans as well -- on the record as opposing Bush's escalation plan.

With "support the president" now a losing proposition, the White House is turning to "support the troops" as their political failsafe.

Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray write in The Washington Post: "A long-awaited Senate showdown on the war in Iraq was shut down before it even started yesterday, when nearly all Republicans voted to stop the Senate from considering a resolution opposing President Bush's plan to send 21,500 additional combat troops into battle. . . .

"The White House worked closely with Senate Republican leaders on strategy while conducting an aggressive outreach that involved assurances from military leaders to wary GOP senators, in addition to personal interventions by Bush."

Carl Hulse and Jeff Zeleny write in the New York Times that the Republican action "short-circuited what had been building as the first major Congressional challenge to President Bush over his handling of the war since Democrats took control of Congress last month. . . .

"At issue is a compromise resolution drawn up chiefly by Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, that says the Senate disagrees with President Bush's plan to build up troops and calls for American forces to be kept out of sectarian violence in Iraq.

"The deadlock came after Democrats refused a proposal by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, that would have cleared the way for a floor fight on the Warner resolution in return for votes on two competing Republican alternatives that were more supportive of the president.

"One of those alternatives, by Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, would declare that Congress should not cut off any funds for forces in the field. That vote was seen as problematic for Democrats because many of them opposed any move to curtail spending, raising the prospect that it could have attracted the broadest support in the Senate."

On the NBC Nightly News, John Harwood of CNBC told Brian Williams: "This is fascinating, Brian. We are learning that President Bush may have more ability to hold Republicans together on Iraq than many assumed after the 2006 elections."

E. J. Dionne Jr. writes in his Washington Post opinion column: "It is now a standard talking point for supporters of this war, from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard to Vice President Cheney himself, to try to block any statement by Congress of its views, except through a vote to block funds for Iraq.

"'The Congress has control over the purse strings,' said Cheney, who on most other occasions insists upon the executive's supremacy over Congress. In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer last month, Cheney added: 'They have the right, obviously, if they want to cut off funding, but in terms of this effort the president has made his decision. . . . We'll continue to consult with the Congress. But the fact of the matter is, we need to get the job done.'"

Bush himself has also endorsed this view. In an interview with members of the Wall Street Journal editorial board last week, Bush for once actually championed Congress's constitutional authority to flout him in matters of war.

"WSJ: There's a lot of discussion in Congress about putting caps on troop levels or defunding or saying you can't deploy, as commander in chief, troops in Baghdad. Do you think Congress has the constitutional authority. . . .

"GWB: I think they have the authority to defund, use their funding power. . . .

"WSJ: You do?

"GWB: Oh yeah, they can say 'We won't fund.' That is a constitutional authority of Congress."

And while many Democrats seem skittish about challenging the president on funding, fearing it would play into his hands, one exception is Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russell Feingold, who had this to say on MSNBC last night: "[M]y concern on the Democratic side is, we're being too timid. We've got to take on this war directly."

Feingold says the public wants "legislation that says that here's a time frame during which this war needs to end, let's say six months from the enactment of the bill, and that the Congress is going to cut off the funding for the war.

"If we, as Democrats, don't start talking like that, and respond to what the public really thinks, then we're only going to have ourselves to blame for the Republican ability to sort of finesse this and massage it. . . .

"[T]his idea that somehow we're going to take away something from the troops that are there already, that's just not true," Feingold said. "Our proposal is that the troops will be out of there. That's the safest thing for the troops is to not be there.

"And that's what our proposal would do. It wouldn't take away their equipment. That's just one of the red herrings or phony arguments that the Republicans use, and usually effectively scare the Democrats into not standing up for what is right, and that is to end this mistaken war and get back to fighting the real issue, which is those that attacked us on 9/11."

Dan Froomkin - Bush Daring Dems on Iraq - washingtonpost.com