Reply #2: no, not abandoning--just making sure Gopers in Congress "support the

[rodeodance]

troops (vote on funding)


..Republicans will still attempt to remove the deadline in a Senate vote expected as soon as today, and GOP leaders were reasonably confident they would muster a majority. But the margin is expected to be thin, requiring the presence of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who had skipped several previous Iraq votes to attend presidential campaign events. McCain canceled a series of fundraisers and meetings in Florida to return to Washington, telling a conservative radio program that he wanted to "beat back this recipe for defeat that the Democrats are trying to foist off on the American people."

No matter the outcome of the Senate vote, McConnell is looking ahead, assuming House Democrats will insist that withdrawal conditions be included when a final bill is sent to Bush. If so, McConnell said, Republicans would forgo the parliamentary tactics they used to block antiwar legislation that had forced Democrats to amass an insurmountable 60 votes to prevail.

"We need to get the bill on down to the president and get the veto out of the way," McConnell said.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino reiterated yesterday Bush's strong opposition to the Senate plan. "We would object to people taking out flexibility for commanders on the ground," she said. Referring to additional sweeteners in the bill, to make it more attractive to individual senators, she added: "And we also object to extra domestic spending that is used to buy votes in order to get to a simple majority vote that is not going to be able to sustain a veto."

As the Senate debate began, Democrats reveled in new evidence suggesting that the party has strong public support for setting an end date. A new Pew Research Center poll found that 59 percent of people surveyed want their congressional representative to support a bill calling for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq by August 2008, the deadline set in the House version of the spending bill, which passed by a 218 to 212 vote on Friday. Thirty-three percent of respondents said they wanted their representative to oppose it.