Bush gets GOP warning on Iraq
WASHINGTON – House Republican moderates, in a remarkably blunt White House meeting, warned President Bush this week that his pursuit of the war in Iraq is risking the future of the Republican Party and that he could not count on GOP support for many more months.
The meeting, which ran for an hour and a half Tuesday afternoon, was disclosed by participants Wednesday as the House prepared to vote tonight on an Iraq spending bill that could cut funding for the war as early as July. Republican moderates told Bush they would stay united against the latest effort by House Democrats to end U.S. involvement in the war. Even Senate Democrats called the House measure unrealistic.
But the meeting between 11 House Republicans, Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, White House political adviser Karl Rove and White House press secretary Tony Snow was perhaps the clearest sign yet that patience in the party is running out. The meeting, organized by Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., one of the co-chairs of the moderate “Tuesday Group,” included Reps. Tom Davis, R-Va., Michael Castle, R-Del., Todd Platts, R-Pa., Jim Ramstad, R-Minn., and Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo.
“It was a very remarkable, candid conversation,” Davis said. “People are always saying President Bush is in a bubble. Well, this was our chance, and we took it.”
Participants in Tuesday’s White House meeting said frustration about the Iraqi government’s efforts dominated the conversation, with one pleading with the president to stop the Iraqi parliament from going on a two-month summer vacation while “our sons and daughters spill their blood.”
The House members pressed Bush and Gates hard for a “Plan B” if the current troop increase fails to quell the violence and push along political reconciliation. Davis said administration officials convinced him there are contingency plans, but that the president declined to offer details, saying that if he announced his backup plan, the world would shift its focus to that contingency, leaving the current strategy no time to succeed.
Davis also presented Bush dismal polling figures to dramatize just how perilous the party’s position is, participants said. Davis would not disclose details, saying the exchange was private. Others warned Bush that his personal credibility on the war is all but gone.
Snow, who sat in on the meeting in the president’s private quarters, said it should not be overdramatized or seen as another “marching up to Nixon,” a reference to the critical moment during Watergate in 1974 when key congressional Republicans went to the White House to tell President Richard M. Nixon that it was time to resign.
“This is not one of those great cresting moments when party discontents are coming in to read the president the riot act,” he said. But Snow acknowledged that the meeting included some blunt, if respectful, discussion.