Members look to next year as they weigh votes on Iraq war

Several surprising votes on the latest Iraq withdrawal proposal suggest lawmakers are paying closer attention to their 2008 campaigns as they weigh Iraq votes.

Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.) had been a consistent Republican vote against Bush on the war, but last week he flipped amid an increasingly strong primary challenge from the right.

{mosads}Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), who faces a well-financed challenge from an anti-war Democrat, has repeatedly called for withdrawal. But until last week, he’d never voted for it.

Rep. Tom Allen (D-Maine), who is mounting an anti-war challenge to centrist Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), voted against the Democratic proposal, calling it too weak.

Each legislator says there’s a solid policy reason behind his vote. But their decisions also make tactical sense as they look to November 2008.

“You live in a political world over there,” said Lawrence Korb, a defense expert at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “This is the way it is.”

But he said the splintering could come to a halt early next year once the two parties choose nominees with clear Iraq policies.

At issue was a $50 billion bill to fund the war for four months. In exchange for the money, President Bush would have been required to begin withdrawal in a month, with a “goal” of withdrawal by Dec. 15, 2008. For a time it looked like there could be a high-profile Iraq showdown in Congress.

The bill passed the House on a 218-203 vote at 10:01 p.m. Wednesday. On Friday, however, the showdown fizzled when Reid allowed the debate to end with the Senate’s 53-45 rejection of closing debate on the measure.

The political narrative heading into the fall was that fervent attacks by anti-war groups would force centrist Republicans to start breaking with Bush in September.

But that didn’t happen. Instead of winning over scores of Republicans, Democrats lost one Democratic member, Rep. Brian Baird (Wash.), who cited the success of the surge and said withdrawal would be premature. Only four Republicans voted in favor of the measure last week.

Anti-war groups did score one victory when Rep. James Walsh (R-N.Y.) broke with Bush at the end of Congress’s August break. Besides Walsh and Shays, Rep. Phil English (R-Pa.), a centrist and key player in bipartisan Iraq legislation with a tough reelection campaign of his own, also voted to order withdrawal for the first time.

The fourth Republican to vote for withdrawal, Walter Jones of North Carolina, has repeatedly voted against the Iraq war.

Walsh appears to be worried about a repeat challenge from Democrat Dan Maffei, a former House aide who in 2006 targeted Walsh’s support for Bush and the Iraq War and won 49 percent of the vote. Maffei is challenging him again in 2008.

“The United States military has done its job well and now is the time for Iraq’s political leaders and security forces to step up and take full responsibility for the direction of their nation,” Walsh said in a statement last week.

Shays is also headed for another tough reelection fight with Democratic businessman Jim Himes, who has raised more than $600,000. After narrowly winning election last year in an anti-war state, Shays announced that most U.S. troops should be removed from Iraq in 2007.

Shays has criticized both Bush’s handling of the war and Democratic proposals for withdrawal. He said previous Democratic withdrawal dates were unreasonable. But the December 2008 date in last week’s bill squared with what Shays had been talking about most recently.

“I thought the bill made sense,” Shays told The Hill on Monday. “I want a timeline, but I want the timeline to be reasonable and workable.”

Allen faces an uphill battle against the popular incumbent Collins. In a recent poll, Collins took about one-third of the Democratic vote against Allen, suggesting Allen has some work to do with his base.

Collins, as she has in the past, broke with her party to support the Democratic Iraq proposal in the Senate. Allen deemed it too weak even though leaders of the liberal Out of Iraq caucus called the bill “the strongest Iraq bill to date.”

“I voted against this bill because it does not set a binding deadline for safe, logical withdrawal of our troops,” Allen said in a statement on his campaign website.

Allen is not the only liberal Democrat to oppose the bill as too weak. Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Michael McNulty (D-N.Y.) also said it didn’t go far enough.

“I believe the language on withdrawal was meaningless,” McNulty said in an interview. “With only a year to go on Bush’s term, we’re beyond sending messages.”

Like Jones, Gilchrest has voted repeatedly with Democrats on Iraq. He opposed Bush’s “surge” in February and supported a timetable for withdrawal in March.

But the two split last week, with Jones voting for the withdrawal proposal and Gilchrest voting against it.

 Gilchrest is facing perhaps his toughest primary challenge in his nine terms in Congress from state Sen. Andy Harris, who has raised more money than Gilchrest so far. The centrist congressman has repeatedly been challenged from the right, and has made a noticeable effort recently to play up his conservative votes.

Gilchrest said a drawdown of troops is already in progress and will continue, since current troop levels can’t be sustained. President Bush has announced a return to pre-surge levels by next summer.

“The question of a drawdown … is almost not the question now because it’s happening,” Gilchrest said. “This vote was very appropriate in April; this vote didn’t take us further along the path.”

Ian Swanson contributed to this report.