With the testimony of General Petraeus and a prime time address by President Bush tonight the Administration has launched a political counter-attack on war critics that has forcibly moved the Democratic leadership off of their original political course of all or nothing on the war. The Washington Post has written a series of articles detailing the political shift, including one today.

Democratic leaders in Congress have decided to shift course and pursue modest bipartisan measures to alter U.S. military strategy in Iraq, hoping to use incremental changes instead of aggressive legislation to break the grip Republicans have held over the direction of war policy.

The political change is bound to be unpopular with the strong anti-war party base, and reflects the fact that President Bush has managed to hold onto Republican support, despite some strong anti-war rhetorical flourishes from some leading Republicans. The Democratic efforts will center on so called moderate Republicans, especially those north of the Mason-Dixon line.

“We’re reaching out to the Republicans to allow them to fulfill their word,” Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said yesterday. “A number of them are quoted significantly saying that come September that there would have to be a change of the course in the war in Iraq.”

And what of the strategy and reaction?

After two days of congressional testimony from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker, the battle lines in the House and Senate over the war have begun to shift, with moderate members of both parties building new momentum behind initiatives that would force the White House to make modest changes to the military mission but not require a substantial drawdown of troops by a set date. Democratic leaders, who have blessed the new approach, now believe that passing compromise legislation is the first step toward more ambitious measures aimed at ending the war, although that tactic is likely to result in stiff opposition from Democratic activists who want a rapid troop withdrawal.

And the White House realizes the stakes and has pushed back hard, using the testimony of General Petraeus to solidify wavering Republicans.

But White House officials believe the president’s hand was strengthened by two days of testimony by Petraeus and Crocker.

“What this is really about at its core is congressional votes about a war policy,” Wehner said. “And that policy will go forward as long as Republicans hold — and that was the first order of business. And they achieved it very well.”

And so the political battle begins anew, but at a substantially different starting point from when Democratic legislative majorities seem poised to force a change in war policy. Have the Democrat’s squandered political opportunity, or was it ever realistic to expect them to be able to force change with the relatively thin majorities they hold? I expect as much intramural debate inside the Democratic Party as will occur between R’s and D’S.

Read the Post article at this link.