Cracks have appeared in the Democrats’ once-unified opposition to the Iraq war, dimming their chances of using the issue to their advantage in the 2008 elections, Republicans say.
Four months before the first primaries, Republican leaders say positive reports — including some from Democrats — about President Bush’s troop surge are convincing voters that the strategy should be given more time to succeed.
Security gains in Iraq not only divided the Democrats, but also put them on the defensive about an issue they thought would help them win back the White House, Republican leaders and party strategists say.
“Left-wing activists and their allies in Congress were banking on August as a watershed for the antiwar movement,” House Minority Leader John A. Boehner said Friday. “But as the calendar turns to September, they’re finding that these plans completely and utterly failed.”
Republican lawmakers heard “less about Iraq, but more about immigration” during their August recess, a senior official in the House Republican leadership told The Washington Times.
Independent pollster John Zogby reported last week that Republicans, indeed, had made gains with voters on the Iraq issue during the past month, with 54 percent now believing the war can be won.
But the numbers are not that clear-cut.
“The poll had two overriding messages: One is that there is no clear direction coming from the American people on Iraq. You have a majority saying the war is not lost, a majority saying the war can be won, but also a majority saying that we are not doing anything good there, and a majority saying they want us out, but they don’t say when,” Mr. Zogby told The Times.
“The other message: This is an issue on which Americans are heavily polarized,” he said. “When you look at the majorities, it’s overwhelmingly Republicans and underwhelmingly Democrats. So, in that sense, it’s confusing for the candidates, especially in the general election, and it’s not necessarily a slam-dunk issue for the Democrats.”
The closeness of the early head-to-head matchups among the presidential front-runners further underscores how narrowly divided Americans are on the war. The two leading presidential candidates, Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican Rudolph W. Giuliani, were running virtually even in a Rasmussen poll last week.
The New York senator has been a critic of the war and says she will end it if she is elected president. The former New York City mayor supports the war, saying it is a critical part of the war on terrorism.
Republicans are also hopeful about a shift in polls showing the party has regained the edge on whom voters trust more to keep the country safe from another terrorist attack.
“Democrats have the edge on every issue except national security and the war on terror. Republicans can now claim a narrow edge of 44 percent to 43 percent on that topic,” Rasmussen reported late last month.
But as the candidates stepped up their campaigns over the Labor Day weekend, the mood of Americans was deeply negative about the direction of the country and their institutions of government.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of 1,005 Americans said last month that just 19 percent “think that things in the nation are generally headed in the right direction.” Sixty-seven percent said they were “off on the wrong track,” and 11 percent said “mixed.”
Similarly, a Gallup poll found that only 18 percent of Americans approve of the job that the Democrat-run Congress is doing.
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