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Washington, House Republican leaders signaled a willingness to accept President Obama’s call for an escalation in the military action against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, putting them in rare agreement with top Senate Democrats just eight weeks before midterm elections in which a modest shift of votes in a half-dozen states could determine the balance of power in Congress.
The Republican conference in the House was to meet Thursday morning. For the leadership of both parties, the move toward a vote on authorizing the training Syrian rebels to fight ISIS reflected how rapidly the thinking had changed over both the threat that the militants represent and the political calculations of being on the right side of the issue with voters. Both lawmakers and the president, however, remain averse to a broader authorization of the use of military force ahead of the November elections.
Mr. Obama’s prime time address to the nation Wednesday night did little to change the minds of the harshest critics of his Syria policy, among them Senator John McCain of Arizona, but it did seem to prompt other Republicans to reassess.
“We are better off with the president than we were a week ago or a month ago,” said Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, in an interview on NPR Thursday morning.
Democrats, long opposed to war in Iraq and in some cases eager to distance themselves from an unpopular president, were expected to line up behind him — and hope their core liberal voters would too.
While the president said he had authority on his own the authorize the new use of force, he pointedly noted that it would send a far better message to the world if Congress approved of it as well.
The House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House majority leader, quickly backed the president’s call for legal authority to train Syrian rebels.
“The threat these terrorists pose to the United States and our allies cannot be tolerated,” Mr. McCarthy said, “and I support the president taking military action in Iraq and Syria to combat this organization. I also support his request for additional authority to support the moderate, vetted Syrian opposition.”
It is rare for a president to undertake a stepped-up military campaign this close to a pivotal election, and both parties see potential advantage — and peril — in an expanded assault on ISIS. Unlike a year ago, when Mr. Obama hoped to launch airstrikes against the forces of Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the American public, polls show, now sees ISIS as a real threat and strongly supports military action to counter it.
At the same time, the public has doubts about the president’s resolve to wage war on the militants. If Wednesday’s speech changes minds, the public’s tendency to rally around the commander-in-chief could shift the dynamic of midterm elections that for now appear to be leaning toward Republican gains, especially in the Senate. If the public sees still more temporizing, the Democrats’ fortunes will sink still further.
“This could be Obama’s 9/11, where he either seizes the reins and takes charge and demonstrates leadership,” said Senator Dan Coats, Republican of Indiana. “If he doesn’t it will be his death knell politically.”
Representative Peter King, Republican of New York, said after the address that he worried Mr. Obama was not laying out a real plan but instead delivering a “check the box speech” to answer his critics. Nevertheless, he said, he will back the president’s policies.
“I am old school,” he said. “I do support the commander-in-chief. So I will support him.”
While Mr. Obama’s speech alone is not likely to shift the headwinds facing his party, a robust military response in the coming weeks might, lawmakers from both parties said.
Senator Mark Begich, Democrat of Alaska and one of the most endangered incumbents, said the “public needs to see that hard action.”
“ That’s not what people see yet,” he said.
At the same time, Mr. Begich said: “I oppose the president’s plan to arm Syrian rebels at this time. I am gravely concerned by reports of ISIS seizing and utilizing U.S. weapons intended for those fighting against the Syrian regime, and we must have greater assurance that we aren’t arming extremists who will eventually use the weapons against us.”
Mr. Obama was assertive in ways that many Democrats had been hoping for.
“We will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are,” he said. “That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency: if you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.”
Representative John B. Larson, Democrat of Connecticut, said that the call to action would unify Congress around the commander-in-chief, as Democrats rallied around President George W. Bush in the run-up to war in Iraq in 2002, a move that for many was to their political detriment.
“Yes there are elections, and elections have consequences, and the memories of those who took difficult votes in 2002 are looming,” he said after the speech. “But we have a responsibility here.”
Both parties are maneuvering for advantage. Senate Democrats will hold a vote as soon as this week to authorize the United States military to train the Syrian rebels and accept foreign funds to do so. They reason that Republicans who have criticized Mr. Obama’s foreign policy will have little choice but to get behind the measure.
House Republican leaders postponed a Thursday vote on a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open into December and instead called an emergency meeting for Thursday morning to discuss the president’s speech and whether they should also agree to the training request. After initial reluctance to put the House on record in support or opposition, House leaders now say Democrats are trapped between their own president’s military action and their base voters’ war-weary opposition.
Hesitation such as that on the part of the president has already turned the ISIS issue into a flashpoint in some of the most competitive Senate races in the country, with Republicans combining grainy, fearsome images of Middle East fighting with other crisis imagery to highlight voters’ sense of insecurity and disorientation. One Democratic leadership aide compared them to the famed “wolves” ad Mr. Bush used in 2004 against John Kerry, his Democratic opponent for re-election.
“Republicans are playing into the frustration of the American people about the lack of presidential leadership,” said Rob Jesmer, a former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “They want a firm hand on the wheel, and that doesn’t look like it’s happening.”
Democrats see their own opportunities. The re-emergence of former Vice President Dick Cheney this week has given Democratic leaders a chance to remind voters of the last Republican administration, which launched the invasion of Iraq. Strategists say Americans will again worry that returning Republicans to power will rush the nation headlong into war.
“The Bush-Cheney strategy of rushing into conflict doesn’t work,” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said Wednesday. “It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now. Taking advice on foreign policy from Dick Cheney? That’s a terrifying prospect.”
AFP
