When considering the failure to press harder on Iraq, many have defended weak actions on the basis that Democrats lack the numbers to hold Bush's feet to the fire. With a Joementum-induced tie in the Senate, there seems little way to force through anything not so watered down that it's useless.
However, there's another source of numbers that's useful -- voters, especially the voters who once placed Republican senators and congressmen in office. Increasingly, even the most solidly Republican among them are ready for a change.
Interviews with voters, elected officials and others in Illinois, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania — home to 4 of the 11 Republican congressmen who met with Mr. Bush about the war — suggest that more Republican voters are opposing the war, and that independents who might have voted Republican are moving toward supporting a Democrat.
As has been pointed out several times, there's really no reason to believe that September is magical, not when it comes to getting any better sense of future activity in Iraq. Republicans who have been pushing that date as a time for checking in on the fiasco, may find that September is too late. They're bleeding support day by day.
Bill Wallin is a retired lawyer for the State of Illinois and the Republican precinct captain for his area of Wilmette. Mr. Wallin said his wife, formerly a Republican, now calls herself an independent. ... "We can demand progress," Mr. Wallin said. "When the war started, I was pretty sure it wasn’t a bad idea. Everything the Bush administration was telling us, I believed. Now I think the war was a mistake. I just think it is a horrendous situation."
This story and the many polls that have come before it show that Republicans, no matter how tough they may talk, are standing on very shaky ground. And they know it. There may be no hooks or crooks available to award Bush another round in the White House, but Republican congressmen and senators are not that anxious to go home.
Democrats are in a much stronger position than mere numbers in the Senate chamber might indicate.
Another point in this story worth noting is just how much the notion of an anti-war movement is still attached to the actions of those willing to go out and make a physical protest. No matter that the same story reflects the broad dislike for the war, again and again they look to the size of protests (and reactions to protestors) as the touchstone for anti-war sentiment.
When the North Shore Women for Peace, a small group of antiwar activists from around here, first stood in the breezeway of a high-end strip mall in nearby Highland Park in the months leading up to the war, they drew sneers, expletives and many a thumbs-down.
By 2005, members said, they had found a more neutral audience, given to stares but little else. Recently, people smiled in support, honked their car horns and volunteered to join the cause at a peace rally.
For many people, these protests are the antiwar movement. Our willingness to support, participate in, and lead such protests over the next few weeks may well be the deciding factor in whether or not Republicans decide they can no longer take the beating.
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