JaylieWoW
05-31-2007, 09:04 AM
Some Hitherto Staunch G.O.P. Voters Souring on Iraq (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/us/politics/30swing.html?ex=1338177600&en=228bfdef026aaf4b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss)
WILMETTE, Ill., May 29 — Through four elections, Debbie Thompson has supported Representative Mark Steven Kirk, a Republican and staunch backer of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq.
Sally Ryan for The New York Times
Annette Jacobson, of the North Shore Women for Peace, after a demonstration in Highland Park, Ill. Members of the group, which regularly protests the war in Iraq, say support for their position has grown.
But Ms. Thompson, a mother of two from this affluent suburb of Chicago, says her views on the war have evolved, and she now wants Mr. Kirk to change, too.
“My patience for this war, it’s run out,” said Ms. Thompson, 53. “I think this is the most expensive, stupidest thing ever done. My frustration has reached a level that is so unsettling, something has to be done.”
Though voters here in the 10th Congressional District have elected a Republican to the House for as long as anyone can remember, there is a newfound hostility about the war that is being directed toward Mr. Kirk, who was narrowly re-elected to a fourth term last November.
Nor is Mr. Kirk alone in his struggle to appease increasingly restless constituents. He and 10 other Republicans in Congress recently delivered a warning to President Bush that conditions in Iraq needed to improve soon because public support of the war was crumbling.
While a majority of Republican voters continue to support Mr. Bush and the Iraq war, including the recent increase in American troops deployed, there are concerns that the war is undermining the party’s political position. A majority of Republicans who were interviewed for a New York Times/CBS News poll this month said that things were going badly in Iraq and that Congress should allow financing only on the condition that the Iraqi government met benchmarks for progress.
In a poll in March, a majority of Republicans said that a candidate who backed Mr. Bush’s war policies would be at a decided disadvantage in 2008. They also suggested that they were open to supporting a candidate who broke with the president on the war.
That change of heart can be seen in many ways around the country. When the North Shore Women for Peace, a small group of antiwar activists from around here, first stood in the breezeway of a high-end strip mall in nearby Highland Park in the months leading up to the war, they drew sneers, expletives and many a thumbs-down.
By 2005, members said, they had found a more neutral audience, given to stares but little else. Recently, people smiled in support, honked their car horns and volunteered to join the cause at a peace rally.
“Anything I can sign?” asked one shopper, Lynne Black, a retiree from Wilmette. “I feel desperation at this point.”
Those feelings are reflected in Congressional districts across the country where Republican backers of the war are taking more political heat. Mr. Kirk would not be interviewed, but one of his biggest backers, the mayor of nearby Kenilworth, Tolbert Chisum, a Republican, described as “remarkable” the meeting between the 11 congressmen and Mr. Bush.
“Given a choice, none of us would want to be at war,” said Mr. Chisum, the committeeman of the largest Republican organization in the North Shore suburbs.
Mr. Chisum expressed confidence that Mr. Kirk would win re-election in 2008 but acknowledged that the battle was shaping up to be fierce, particularly since Democrats won control of both houses of Congress last November.
“I’m a realist,” Mr. Chisum said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen between now and the next election. Who would have thought there would be a complete rollover in the House and Senate?”
Interviews with voters, elected officials and others in Illinois, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania — home to 4 of the 11 Republican congressmen who met with Mr. Bush about the war — suggest that more Republican voters are opposing the war, and that independents who might have voted Republican are moving toward supporting a Democrat.
Emmett F. Vanslyke, a musician from Syracuse, is typical of some of the independent voters in those districts. Mr. Vanslyke said he would support his Republican congressman, Representative James T. Walsh, only if Mr. Walsh changed positions on the war by the next election.
“We’ve been over there with the lost cause,” Mr. Vanslyke said. “I would support anybody that would get the soldiers out.”
Democratic voters who opposed the war still do so, they say, and more passionately than ever. The North Shore Women for Peace, for instance, had never gone so far as to call for Mr. Bush’s impeachment — until recently. Now they carry yellow signs with black letters that say “Impeach.”
“Things have changed a lot,” said a member, Annette Jacobson, a retired court reporter from Highland Park. “We have a terrible feeling of anguish that more people are coming to understand.”
A slightly less hawkish Mr. Kirk has emerged in recent months. He voted against the troop surge backed by Congress early this year and wrote on his blog, “The United States should increase the responsibilities of the elected Iraqi government to solve its own problems, while reducing the number of American combat troops sent overseas.”
To some voters, that only made him seem less committed to his convictions, highlighting some of the pitfalls of changing course.
“He’s all over the place,” said Sally Walshe, a psychiatrist and a member of the North Shore peace group. “Wants to have his cake and eat it, too.”
Representative Jim Gerlach, Republican of Pennsylvania, another of the 11 who met with Mr. Bush, faces similar issues. Some voters said they believed that Mr. Gerlach was under pressure and was losing popularity in a marginally Republican district because of the administration’s handling of the war.
“The public wants to hear that the war is going to be over soon,” said Tiffany Hines, a Pennsylvanian who works as a medicine packager in Norristown.
In Pottstown, a peace group that demonstrates against the war every Friday is getting more honks from passing motorists after initially being seen as a bit radical, said Patricia Matson, editor of The Phoenix, a newspaper in Phoenixville, in Mr. Gerlach’s district.
“I don’t think it’s overwhelmingly antiwar,” Ms. Matson said, “but more so now than it was a year ago.”
G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, said Mr. Gerlach “understands he has a serious political problem.”
In Minnesota, Representative Jim Ramstad, a Republican who has supported the war, won with 72 percent of the vote in 1998 and 2000, but dropped to 68 percent in 2002 and about 65 percent in 2004 and 2006.
“If he comes out and is too strongly critical of the war, he’s going to lose his base,” said Larry Jacobs, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. “But if he doesn’t create some space between himself and the president, he could lose the independent voters.”
Mr. Kirk’s case in Illinois is not helped by his being in an overwhelmingly Democratic state where political experts expect large numbers to turn out in 2008 for the Democratic presidential nominee. It will be even harder for Mr. Kirk to hold his seat if that nominee turns out to be Senator Barack Obama of Illinois or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who is a native of Chicago.
Bill Wallin is a retired lawyer for the State of Illinois and the Republican precinct captain for his area of Wilmette. Mr. Wallin said his wife, formerly a Republican, now calls herself an independent. He said he thought Mr. Kirk was right to petition the White House.
“We can demand progress,” Mr. Wallin said. “When the war started, I was pretty sure it wasn’t a bad idea. Everything the Bush administration was telling us, I believed. Now I think the war was a mistake. I just think it is a horrendous situation.”
Correction: May 31, 2007
An article yesterday about Congressional districts where Republican supporters of the war are taking political heat referred incorrectly to a House resolution on the president’s decision to increase troops in Iraq, a decision opposed by Representative Mark Steven Kirk, Republican of Illinois. The resolution opposed the president’s plan, it did not back it.
WILMETTE, Ill., May 29 — Through four elections, Debbie Thompson has supported Representative Mark Steven Kirk, a Republican and staunch backer of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq.
Sally Ryan for The New York Times
Annette Jacobson, of the North Shore Women for Peace, after a demonstration in Highland Park, Ill. Members of the group, which regularly protests the war in Iraq, say support for their position has grown.
But Ms. Thompson, a mother of two from this affluent suburb of Chicago, says her views on the war have evolved, and she now wants Mr. Kirk to change, too.
“My patience for this war, it’s run out,” said Ms. Thompson, 53. “I think this is the most expensive, stupidest thing ever done. My frustration has reached a level that is so unsettling, something has to be done.”
Though voters here in the 10th Congressional District have elected a Republican to the House for as long as anyone can remember, there is a newfound hostility about the war that is being directed toward Mr. Kirk, who was narrowly re-elected to a fourth term last November.
Nor is Mr. Kirk alone in his struggle to appease increasingly restless constituents. He and 10 other Republicans in Congress recently delivered a warning to President Bush that conditions in Iraq needed to improve soon because public support of the war was crumbling.
While a majority of Republican voters continue to support Mr. Bush and the Iraq war, including the recent increase in American troops deployed, there are concerns that the war is undermining the party’s political position. A majority of Republicans who were interviewed for a New York Times/CBS News poll this month said that things were going badly in Iraq and that Congress should allow financing only on the condition that the Iraqi government met benchmarks for progress.
In a poll in March, a majority of Republicans said that a candidate who backed Mr. Bush’s war policies would be at a decided disadvantage in 2008. They also suggested that they were open to supporting a candidate who broke with the president on the war.
That change of heart can be seen in many ways around the country. When the North Shore Women for Peace, a small group of antiwar activists from around here, first stood in the breezeway of a high-end strip mall in nearby Highland Park in the months leading up to the war, they drew sneers, expletives and many a thumbs-down.
By 2005, members said, they had found a more neutral audience, given to stares but little else. Recently, people smiled in support, honked their car horns and volunteered to join the cause at a peace rally.
“Anything I can sign?” asked one shopper, Lynne Black, a retiree from Wilmette. “I feel desperation at this point.”
Those feelings are reflected in Congressional districts across the country where Republican backers of the war are taking more political heat. Mr. Kirk would not be interviewed, but one of his biggest backers, the mayor of nearby Kenilworth, Tolbert Chisum, a Republican, described as “remarkable” the meeting between the 11 congressmen and Mr. Bush.
“Given a choice, none of us would want to be at war,” said Mr. Chisum, the committeeman of the largest Republican organization in the North Shore suburbs.
Mr. Chisum expressed confidence that Mr. Kirk would win re-election in 2008 but acknowledged that the battle was shaping up to be fierce, particularly since Democrats won control of both houses of Congress last November.
“I’m a realist,” Mr. Chisum said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen between now and the next election. Who would have thought there would be a complete rollover in the House and Senate?”
Interviews with voters, elected officials and others in Illinois, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania — home to 4 of the 11 Republican congressmen who met with Mr. Bush about the war — suggest that more Republican voters are opposing the war, and that independents who might have voted Republican are moving toward supporting a Democrat.
Emmett F. Vanslyke, a musician from Syracuse, is typical of some of the independent voters in those districts. Mr. Vanslyke said he would support his Republican congressman, Representative James T. Walsh, only if Mr. Walsh changed positions on the war by the next election.
“We’ve been over there with the lost cause,” Mr. Vanslyke said. “I would support anybody that would get the soldiers out.”
Democratic voters who opposed the war still do so, they say, and more passionately than ever. The North Shore Women for Peace, for instance, had never gone so far as to call for Mr. Bush’s impeachment — until recently. Now they carry yellow signs with black letters that say “Impeach.”
“Things have changed a lot,” said a member, Annette Jacobson, a retired court reporter from Highland Park. “We have a terrible feeling of anguish that more people are coming to understand.”
A slightly less hawkish Mr. Kirk has emerged in recent months. He voted against the troop surge backed by Congress early this year and wrote on his blog, “The United States should increase the responsibilities of the elected Iraqi government to solve its own problems, while reducing the number of American combat troops sent overseas.”
To some voters, that only made him seem less committed to his convictions, highlighting some of the pitfalls of changing course.
“He’s all over the place,” said Sally Walshe, a psychiatrist and a member of the North Shore peace group. “Wants to have his cake and eat it, too.”
Representative Jim Gerlach, Republican of Pennsylvania, another of the 11 who met with Mr. Bush, faces similar issues. Some voters said they believed that Mr. Gerlach was under pressure and was losing popularity in a marginally Republican district because of the administration’s handling of the war.
“The public wants to hear that the war is going to be over soon,” said Tiffany Hines, a Pennsylvanian who works as a medicine packager in Norristown.
In Pottstown, a peace group that demonstrates against the war every Friday is getting more honks from passing motorists after initially being seen as a bit radical, said Patricia Matson, editor of The Phoenix, a newspaper in Phoenixville, in Mr. Gerlach’s district.
“I don’t think it’s overwhelmingly antiwar,” Ms. Matson said, “but more so now than it was a year ago.”
G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, said Mr. Gerlach “understands he has a serious political problem.”
In Minnesota, Representative Jim Ramstad, a Republican who has supported the war, won with 72 percent of the vote in 1998 and 2000, but dropped to 68 percent in 2002 and about 65 percent in 2004 and 2006.
“If he comes out and is too strongly critical of the war, he’s going to lose his base,” said Larry Jacobs, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. “But if he doesn’t create some space between himself and the president, he could lose the independent voters.”
Mr. Kirk’s case in Illinois is not helped by his being in an overwhelmingly Democratic state where political experts expect large numbers to turn out in 2008 for the Democratic presidential nominee. It will be even harder for Mr. Kirk to hold his seat if that nominee turns out to be Senator Barack Obama of Illinois or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who is a native of Chicago.
Bill Wallin is a retired lawyer for the State of Illinois and the Republican precinct captain for his area of Wilmette. Mr. Wallin said his wife, formerly a Republican, now calls herself an independent. He said he thought Mr. Kirk was right to petition the White House.
“We can demand progress,” Mr. Wallin said. “When the war started, I was pretty sure it wasn’t a bad idea. Everything the Bush administration was telling us, I believed. Now I think the war was a mistake. I just think it is a horrendous situation.”
Correction: May 31, 2007
An article yesterday about Congressional districts where Republican supporters of the war are taking political heat referred incorrectly to a House resolution on the president’s decision to increase troops in Iraq, a decision opposed by Representative Mark Steven Kirk, Republican of Illinois. The resolution opposed the president’s plan, it did not back it.