Last week we tried

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Last week we tried to nail down members of the Republican leadership in Congress on where they stand on the President’s soon-to-be-proposed “surge.” The response? Mostly silence.

But in an interview published today, one veteran Republican congressman says he is “highly skeptical” that a surge will have any real effect on the ground. Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN), who won re-election after a hard-fought campaign, was surprisingly candid in an interview with the Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette:

In my opinion, it’s been a civil war. But the question of a civil war is: Is there a functioning central government that can win a civil war? … What’s not clear to me is if this government can ever be stable and that the civil war has gone from skirmishing and marginal fighting at the terrorist level and some Shiite militias to the dominant pattern. There’s no number of troops we can put on the ground to basically battle inside of a large-scale civil war without a functioning central government.

If we see that it’s developed that way, do we stay to 2008 or do we get out in 2007? At what point do you say we’ve gone across the line where there’s not a hope of stability or at least that it appears to be small?

. . .

I think it’s intriguing that the president is looking at trying to put more troops on the ground like Sen. McCain has suggested all the way along. But my impression – and I haven’t been there since spring – is that we’ve passed that point. Even doubling the number of troops on the ground won’t do it. Instead of just having potentially a few thousand people that you’re trying to stabilize who are picking at random where to hit, or even 20,000, basically at this point the whole country’s engaged. Which means an increase in troop power isn’t going to stabilize it.

. . .

It’s the beginning of the end. The question now is how fast.

. . .

What is it going to look like if we all of a sudden immediately pulled out, pulled out in six months, 12 months or 18 months? Now we’re back to what’s in the interest of the United States and our world security picture, not trying to establish a government in Iraq. … I don’t have any confidence they have a plan. So maybe our troops have to stay there till ’08 till we get a plan of what’s a withdrawal look like. So I don’t know the answer to your question, but I know what variables I’m looking for.

If they can make a compelling case that more troops on the ground would give us a chance, I’m willing to listen. But I’m highly skeptical.

. . .

In my opinion the American people have already closed the book on “are we willing to wait until they have established a free and democratic government that’s safe and secure in Iraq?” The answer is no – unless they can do it awful fast.

Souder may be something of an outlier. He was one of the few GOP members whom I recall coming out publicly for pulling troops back even before the election. But overall he is a reliable conservative from a reliably conservative state. If the President loses the Mark Souders, he’s in big trouble on the Hill.

On one level, it’s hard to imagine the GOP minority not coming around to support the President’s surge. At the same time, these same folks just endured a withering political climate first-hand; saw some of their longtime colleagues defeated; won re-election in some cases by much narrower margins and after spending much more money than in the past; and by and large got an unpleasant earful from voters back home. They face election campaigns in two short years. The President doesn’t.

Even if the GOP presents a united front in support of the surge, as I expect it will, you can bet that just below the surface will be much skepticism and caution. With Souder’s remarks, the cracks in that facade are already showing.

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