The stakes from Thursdays

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The stakes (from Thursday’s Journal …)

Senate Republicans signaled their wariness yesterday in a private retreat on the year’s legislative agenda with White House adviser Karl Rove. An attendee said the senators gave Mr. Rove “a subtle but clearly identifiable message that the GOP [Grand Old Party] would go along…but they were scared to death.” The senators indicated that the president “had to step up his activity” to sell his initiative to Americans, which Mr. Rove said Mr. Bush would do. But the attendee said senators also warned the Social Security proposal “needed to be bipartisan or else no go.”

Still, some Republicans are resigned to uniting behind the president, given his determination. “The president is going to go ahead,” said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a Republican leadership lieutenant. “He cannot afford to fail. It would have repercussions for the rest of his program, including foreign policy. We can’t hand the president a defeat on his major domestic initiative at a time of war.”

Let’s just <$Ad$>agree to pass over that last comment, the implication of which is if Social Security is preserved it would be a win for the terrorists, and just note the following …

The prerequisite for defending and preserving Social Security is Democratic unity. As the senators apparently told Mr. Rove, down-the-line opposition from the Democrats raises the stakes on them dramatically. Then the demise of Social Security becomes a Republican deed through and through. And all the political coverage of the Social Security debate will center on divisions among Republicans, their internal discussions of strategy, who has cold feet about the phase-out and who’s pushing full steam ahead.

But for the prerequisite for all of this is Democratic unity. Muddy the waters and the whole picture changes.

You might mention it to these folks …

The Fainthearted Faction

House

Rep. Allen Boyd (D-FL) (L&P!)

Rep. Robert “Bud” Cramer (D-AL)

Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn) (*)

Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wisc) (OFO?)

Rep. James Moran (D-VA) (*)

Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN)

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) (*)

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA)

Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn)

Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss)

Senate (note: senate list is roughly in order of relative Faction-hood …)

Ben Nelson (D-NE)

Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

Tom Carper of (D-DE)

Evan Bayh (D-IN)

(Say It Ain’t So) Joe Lieberman (D-CT)

Associate Members

Gov. Ed Rendell (D-PA) (*)

(ed.note: ‘L&P!’ designates members who are “Loud and Proud!” in their support of the president’s phase-out bill. “OFO?” designates members who may already have “One Foot Out” of the Fainthearted Faction. Linked asterisks (*) note events, statements or stories that have affected a member’s position within the Fainthearted Faction.)

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