WASHINGTON — Public anxiety over the Iraq war, already reflected in polls and demands from some Democrats to withdraw U.S. troops, is now prompting calls for change from some unlikely quarters: Republican congressional candidates.
Across the country, GOP candidates are breaking with the White House over how long troops should remain in Iraq and who should lead the war effort.
Even some of President Bush's staunchest allies in solidly Republican states are publicly questioning the administration's war policies, while others are scrambling to find new ways to talk about Iraq in the face of rising voter frustration over management of the war.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), who earlier this year stood by Bush during some of the most damaging sectarian violence, this week said that Iraq was in "chaos" and that it was "worth trying" to partition the country into semiautonomous regions, a proposal that sharply diverged from White House policy.
In Washington state this week, the Republican candidate for the Senate called on Bush to replace Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a position also taken by a Republican congressman from Connecticut and the party's Senate candidate in New Jersey, Thomas H. Kean Jr.
Kean said this week that the Bush administration had made "horrendous mistakes" in Iraq.
In Minnesota and Iowa, congressmen in tough reelection battles have called for withdrawing troops. So, too, has the Republican candidate in the congressional district around Boulder, Colo.
And in Virginia and Tennessee, states that Bush won handily in 2004, Senate candidates have been put on the defensive over their earlier calls to "stay the course" in Iraq, a line Republicans once hoped would demonstrate resolve. Both candidates there are now saying the U.S. must change tactics in Iraq.
"We haven't found one part of the country, even in the South, where it is good to say, 'Stay the course,' " said Sarah Chamberlain Resnick, executive director of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a group for GOP centrists. But Republicans "don't want to do a major in-your-face with the president. They are trying to work around the issue in their districts."
The rhetorical tap-dancing over the war is a somewhat novel experience for Republicans, who have ridden to victory in the last two national elections with a strong and unified stand on the war. In 2002 and 2004, Bush and other GOP leaders increased the party's congressional majorities by hammering Democratic candidates as weak and indecisive.
