Iraq Vote Could Resonate In 2008

"I don't think it's appropriate to say that you disapprove of a mission and you don't want to fund it and you don't want it to go, but yet you don't take the action necessary to prevent it," McCain said on ABC's "This Week."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) warned that it would be "a terrible mistake to prevent this debate."

"If we can't get this done, you can be sure a month or so down the pike, there's going to be much stronger legislation," Feinstein said on CNN's "Late Edition."

Supporters of the resolution include most Democrats and at least seven, and possibly as many as 11, Republicans, led by Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia, who assembled the compromise measure under consideration. The pro-resolution Republicans include five senators who will face voters in 2008: Warner, Smith, Susan Collins of Maine, Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

Hagel, who is considering running for president, initially supported a tougher resolution condemning Bush's war policy. Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.) is the one declared GOP presidential candidate supporting the Warner measure.

The big unknown is what a handful of Republican fence-sitters such as Sununu will do. The GOP undecideds include Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) and Larry E. Craig (Idaho), who are also up for reelection in 2008, along with Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Arlen Specter (Pa.), who are not.

For many Republicans, the scrutiny will be intense. A coalition of liberal activists, labor unions and antiwar veterans aired Super Bowl advertisements yesterday targeting Coleman and Collins. Other advertisements are running in Richmond and Manchester, N.H., to pressure Warner, Sununu and Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.).

Coleman said he found it "offensive" to suggest that senators' reelection concerns could influence their stand. But he conceded: "Certainly senators like myself and Collins and others are in tough states. Anything we do always gets measured against that."

Indeed, Coleman is under attack, first for opposing a tougher resolution approved last month by the Foreign Relations Committee, then for supporting Warner's resolution after standing by the president for so long.

"No matter what these guys do now, they're going to have to be held to account for the choices they made not to do oversight when they said we have to back the president no matter what," said Al Franken, a liberal comedian and talk-show host mulling a race against Coleman next year. "When he had the gavel, he gave the president a free pass."

Alexander insisted that political considerations are not his foremost concern, but he conceded that he is struggling to strike the right note. "I'm unhappy about the conduct of the war in Iraq, and I would like to express my support for the troops at the same time. I want to find an appropriate way to say that," said the first-term senator, who could draw a formidable opponent in 2008 as his state drifts increasingly Democratic.

Sununu, whose once Republican-dominated state leaned Democratic last year, has drawn four potential Democratic opponents for 2008. Collins could face one of the toughest battles two years out, given that Maine has supported Democrats in the past two presidential elections.