Other than Joe Lieberman, it seems Bush is just about alone in his optimism about the war in Iraq. That includes Republicans.
Faced with almost daily reports of sectarian carnage in Iraq, congressional Republicans are shifting their message on the war from speaking optimistically of progress to acknowledging the difficulty of the mission and pointing up mistakes in planning and execution.
Rep. Christopher Shays (Conn.) is using his House Government Reform subcommittee on national security to vent criticism of the White House’s war strategy and new estimates of the monetary cost of the war. Rep. Gil Gutknecht (Minn.), once a strong supporter of the war, returned from Iraq this week declaring that conditions in Baghdad were far worse “than we’d been led to believe” and urging that troop withdrawals begin immediately.
And freshman Sen. John Thune (S.D.) told reporters at the National Press Club that if he were running for reelection this year, “you obviously don’t embrace the president and his agenda.”
It’s tempting to congratulate these Republicans for coming around and embracing some semblance of reality, but I’m afraid it’s difficult to be charitable under the circumstances. After years of defending an indefensible policy, and blasting any Democrat who had the audacity to suggest an approach different from the president’s, now Republicans are prepared to “shift their message”?
For that matter, the “shift” itself isn’t necessarily about a change in policy; it’s about threading a political needle. They’re looking for a third way — not in terms of the future of Iraq, but in terms of how to talk about the future of Iraq.
Rank-and file Republicans who once adamantly backed the administration on the war are moving to a two-stage new message, according to some lawmakers. First, Republicans are making it clear to constituents they do not agree with every decision the president has made on Iraq. Then they boil the argument down to two choices: staying and fighting or conceding defeat to a vicious enemy.
There’s something of a split within the caucus here. Some lawmakers, such as Walter Jones and Gutknecht, have completely given up on the president’s policy and believe we should start getting troops out of the middle of a civil war. Most of the GOP caucus, however, is still on board with an open-ended commitment and an indefinite troop presence. Anything else is “cut and run.”
So, what is the subtle shift? It’s all about optimism. The Bush administration believes things are going really well in Iraq and we should all be proud of the tremendous progress that the president’s visionary policy has produced. As part of this rose-colored-glasses look at the war, U.S. troops will be in Iraq indefinitely, and, as Bush put it, “Getting out of Iraq is up to presidents who come after me.”
Congressional Republicans, who no longer want to be associated with the administration’s nonsense, are now prepared to say that conditions in Iraq aren’t as great as the president would like to believe — but we still can’t leave.
“It’s like after Katrina, when the secretary of homeland security was saying all those people weren’t really stranded when we were all watching it on TV,” said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), who repeated “cut and run” as often as anyone during the recent House debate on teh war. “I still hear about that. We can’t look like we won’t face reality.”
Unfortunately, how the GOP “looks” is paramount.