GOP Focus on Security Issues to Sideline Other Matters

The single-minded focus has some Republicans concerned that bread-and-butter issues of great importance to the battleground states of the Midwest and the Northeast are being left on the cutting-room floor. Friday was the ninth anniversary of the last increase in the federal minimum wage, yet minimum-wage bills coveted by embattled Republicans are not on the priority list.

In a letter, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) urged Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to take up legislation allowing small businesses to band together to purchase health insurance, and to help seniors who have already exhausted their prescription drug coverage find a more generous plan.

Other lawmakers want to make good on promises to forgive penalties for seniors who missed the deadline to sign up for a Medicare drug plan.

But even Republicans who would prefer a domestic-policy emphasis understand what is at work. McCotter said a sustained debate on national security and terrorism is the best way to remind the most voters why they have trusted Republicans with control of Washington.

"As the Democrats have discovered so many times, when national security comes to the fore, all of a sudden things don't look so good for them," he said.

Democrats believe the national security theme will not have the sting it had in 2002 and 2004. A Newsweek poll last month found that 44 percent of those surveyed trusted Republicans to handle the effort against terrorism, at home and abroad, compared with 39 percent who trusted Democrats. In 2002, Republicans led on that question, 47 percent to 24 percent.

Republicans hope to force Democrats into difficult votes on the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program and on the Bush administration's plans to use military tribunals to try terrorism suspects.

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said he fully expects Republicans to go back to the political playbook that worked so well in the past two elections. But he added: "They've run that play one too many times."

The other problem for Republicans is finishing work on legislation. Republican leaders would like to quickly bring to a vote a bill that would give Bush as much latitude as possible to continue what they call the terrorist surveillance program -- then dare Democrats to oppose it.

But some Republicans close to the issue are committed to serious legislation that could have bipartisan appeal. Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.), who wrote the most prominent House surveillance bill, said it is time for Congress to reassert its authority over the NSA's surveillance program and demand that the president obtain a warrant for any wiretapping, unless he expressly seeks Congress's permission not to. That tough stance hardly presents a dilemma for Democrats, who have called for the same thing.

"This is not a partisan issue," Wilson said. "This is a national security issue, and I've tried to keep it that way."

Similarly, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) has drafted legislation that he said would bring Bush's military tribunals into compliance with the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, as well as garner bipartisan support.

That may not fly with House conservatives who are resisting offering due-process rights to terrorism suspects.

The situation could lead to difficult negotiations on the Hill in a supercharged political atmosphere and a tight deadline.

"For a bill as important as this, this is a very quick timetable," conceded John Ullyot, a Senate Armed Services Committee spokesman.