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| Senate debate: Sen. Pete Domenici hears from colleagues in the elevator. Andy Nelson – staff |
Antiwar forces take aim at GOP lawmakers
'Iraq summer' activists claim credit for certain defections on Bush's Iraq policy. Republicans dispute that.
By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the July 16, 2007 edition
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Washington - With the war in Iraq roiling Congress, antiwar groups are targeting dozens of lawmakers – many facing tough reelection races in 2008 – in a bid to peel off enough Republicans to force President Bush to end the war there.
Organizers claim that breaks in GOP ranks over war strategy in recent weeks are a result of more heat from home – and that they helped to generate it. As debate resumes this week, they predict, more defections will occur.
"We're running a political campaign with a long horizon," says Tom Matzzie of MoveOn.org Political Action, who is managing the "Iraq Summer" campaign for Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI). "We'll gain more ... momentum over the next few weeks, and more Republicans will break."
Lawmakers say they're making up their own minds, independent of antiwar-group pressure. It may be coincidence that Sen. Pete Domenici (R) announced his opposition to Mr. Bush's war strategy two days after AAEI launched its campaign in his home state of New Mexico – despite the group's taking credit for the switch.
Seven Senate Republicans – six up for reelection in 2008 – voted last week against the Bush administration's position on a proposal to mandate longer time at home for US forces. If passed, the measure would have limited Bush's ability to redeploy units to a war zone.
Senator Domenici was not one of the defectors on that vote. But this week he is expected to back a proposal to require the Bush administration to revise US policy in accordance with the 2006 recommendations of the Iraq Study Group.
Antiwar organizers in his home state say that's not enough. "The ... amendment [on the Iraq Study Group] is not as strong" as one that sets a timetable for the redeployment of US forces out of a combat role in Iraq, says Greg Richardson, who is organizing the Iraq Summer campaign in New Mexico. "Over 70 percent of Americans no longer support the war, and Senator Domenici is out of touch," he said in a phone interview.
On Thursday, the House voted 223 to 201 to begin drawing down US forces in Iraq. Only four Republicans joined most Democrats on that vote, well short of the GOP votes needed to overturn a presidential veto.
But House Democrats plan to hold more votes on Iraq, which antiwar activists say provide grist for them. To counteract them, House Republican leaders sent their members home for July 4 recess with a briefing paper on the Iraq Summer campaign. The countermessage, said a GOP aide, is "it's not a groundswell of revolt, but an organized campaign by the MoveOn crowd to put pressure on" GOP lawmakers.
"This is a really big issue, and people are voting their conscience. They don't intend to be politically intimidated," says Rep. Tom Cole (R) of Oklahoma, who heads the House GOP reelection campaign. "Republicans broadly think that we should not be micromanaging the war from here or undercutting the mission, and that we should give the surge a chance to work."
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