Congress has had almost a month at home among their constituents to mull over the war in Iraq and their own political futures. Jason Altmire (PA-04) is a freshman Democrat from a district where Bush took 55% of the vote in 2004. He says:
“I have seen a little more talk about the surge working. I don’t know if it’s happening across the country,” he said. But he added that people still seemed “3- or 4-to-1 against it.”
Even in this solidly red district, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of the people that Altmire talks to are against the surge. And he’s not the only one feeling it.
“The war is clearly the No. 1 issue on people’s minds. It comes up wherever I go,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is up for reelection next year. “In general, I have found that people are eager to see our troops start coming home. But they recognize the dire consequences of an abrupt withdrawal.”
Yet, there are few chinks in the Republicans’ armor from their time at home. It’s true that Sen. John Warner has returned from Iraq with a recommendation that we begin withdrawal by Christmas (even if it is only 5,000 troops). There have been almost no other defections. All the movement has been on our side.
…Rep. Brian Baird, a low-key Democrat from Washington State who has spent a career toiling away on local issues, suddenly came out in support of President Bush’s troop surge in Iraq…
Baird, who had just returned from a trip to Iraq, now opposes any timetable for troop withdrawal.
Those statements effectively hooked a boulder to the Democrats’ gathering momentum for a swift troop pull-out. And Baird wasn’t the only one. Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fla.) came back from Iraq and told his local newspaper that the surge “has really made a difference and really has gotten al Qaeda on their heels.”
I’d rather play activist than pundit, but I don’t like the way the momentum is shaping up for our showdown in September. Our entire strategy is predicated on peeling vulnerable or principled Republicans away from the President. And it looks like the opposite is the more prevalent circumstance at the moment.
