For GOP Presidential Candidates, the Less Said About Iraq the Better
By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 30, 2007
The 2008 Republican presidential candidates have a simple position on the war in Iraq: They want victory, and they want to talk about something else.
With the notable exception of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), they echo President Bush, and say the United States must remain in Iraq for an unspecified period until the country is stable, and that leaving before then would be a victory for al-Qaeda.
But they usually only say that when asked. The two leading candidates in Iowa, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, occasionally give entire speeches without even using the word "Iraq."
Unlike the Democratic candidates, who have competed over who can offer the most precise plan for withdrawing troops as president, the GOP candidates have offered limited visions about how they see Iraq's future, choosing instead to focus on how they would enlarge the U.S. military to fight the broader war on terrorism.
"The advantage for the Republicans is to broaden the lens and talk about the war on terror," said Peter H. Wehner, a former Bush adviser. "Iraq is an unpopular war; it will always be unpopular. It's not an issue that's going to galvanize a lot of public support."
Rich Galen, a senior adviser to former Tennessee senator Fred D. Thompson, said: "The MoveOn.org wing of the Democratic Party, they are the ones fixated on this. Republicans tend not to be fixed on particularly on the war; they are satisfied things are moving in the right direction."
Romney aides have said he supports the administration's plan to draw down from 20 to 15 brigades by next summer, but said he would wait until he hears views of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, before offering proposals about troop levels. Romney has said he envisions a staged drawdown of U.S. forces that would first put them in support roles in Iraq and then eventually in other countries in the Middle East where they can provide support in Iraq if needed.
Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's aides declined to comment when asked whether the mayor would support a permanent stationing of troops in Iraq.
Of the war's supporters, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), talks about it most frequently, and he has essentially staked his candidacy on having advocated an increase in troops earlier this year that is credited with reducing violence.
In Wednesday night's debate, McCain found a convenient foil in Paul, who has raised millions from a band of loyal supporters despite weak poll numbers. Paul, a former Air Force flight surgeon, is one of the few Republicans who opposed the war from the beginning. He has called for an immediate withdrawal.
"We allowed Hitler to come to power with that kind of attitude of isolationism and appeasement," McCain said. "And I want to tell you something, sir. I just finished having Thanksgiving with the troops, and their message to you is -- the message of these brave men and women who are serving over there is -- 'Let us win.' "
But the other candidates on the stage hardly mentioned the war, reflecting a complicated political dynamic. GOP voters say the war on terrorism is a very important issue, and they associate it with the war in Iraq, unlike Democrats. Polls show a vast majority of Republican voters want to keep troops there.
At the same time, a strategist for one leading GOP contender, who did not want to be named discussing internal campaign strategy, said that his campaign's focus groups show GOP voters like Bush but are eager for the end of both the war and his tenure and do not really want to talk about either.
After a speech in Iowa this month in which he hardly mentioned Iraq, Huckabee was asked more specifically about his views. "We have to stay in Iraq until we win," he said to applause in Vinton. "We've to make sure it's stable. The democracy is never going to be what we want it to be."
His words reflect another reason why the Republicans are not talking about Iraq: They have largely adopted the same position, making it hard to contrast among candidates. Many of them have suggested that they would have had more troops in Iraq if they had led the invasion.
Romney has used this as an argument that his management experience would make him a good president. He told a crowd in New Hampshire earlier this year that if he had been president he would have assembled a large group of advisers to develop a better war plan that would have eliminated mistakes.
McCain constantly notes that for years he opposed what he calls the "Rumsfeld strategy," referring to the former defense secretary who advocated going into Iraq with fewer troops than the uniformed military wanted. That he defines it as the "Rumsfeld strategy" reflects part of the quandary in talking about the war. Campaign aides say that while GOP voters want "change," it is wise to avoid directly bashing Bush.
The candidates' visions for Iraq's future all reflect the same distancing from Bush, unspoken but obvious. The candidates all define success in Iraq in terms of "stability" and a reduced al-Qaeda presence. They pointedly leave out the word "democracy," which had long been a goal of the administration.
"It took the United States of America a bloody Civil War and nearly 100 years to decide exactly what our country would be like, so I don't presume to know exactly what kind of government Iraq will have," McCain said in an interview.
What policy differences have emerged related to Iraq have been more related to combating terrorism.
McCain, a former prisoner of war, has repeatedly said he opposes the use of anything that could be defined as torture. McCain has repeatedly attacked Romney and other GOP candidates for not ruling out waterboarding as an interrogation technique. He has said he would close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where terrorism suspects are jailed, another position the other GOP candidates have not adopted.
By contrast, Romney has suggested doubling the number of prisoners at Guantanamo, while Giuliani has spoken about keeping military options to stop Iran from creating nuclear weapons.
Looking ahead, some party strategists think that if levels of violence remain at current levels, Iraq will recede as an election issue, which could help the GOP next fall. Voters may be less focused on the issue, and Bush or one of the GOP candidates could call for a reduction of troops, shifting the war debate from continuing the conflict vs. ending it, which polls suggest would favor the Democrats, to instead focus on simply different plans for withdrawing.
"If this is moving in the right direction," Galen said, "it's not clear to me 10 months from now the Iraq war will be a very high priority thing in the general election."
But for now, the candidates' position on Iraq remains a potential problem for the general election. A Pew Research Center for the People and the Press poll released this week found that even though 48 percent of Americans think the war effort is going well, compared with 30 percent in February, 54 percent of Americans say the U.S. should bring troops home, a number that has not changed for months.
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