An Iraq Compromise

By KAREN TUMULTY

Now that George W. Bush has used his veto pen for only the second time in his presidency, rejecting a $124 billion military-spending bill that would have set a timetable to bring U.S. combat troops home, there is one group that is suddenly getting some attention again in Washington: congressional Republicans. That's because Democrats lack the two-thirds vote they need to override Bush's veto and realize that their only real option for forcing any concessions from the White House is to rewrite the measure in a way that draws significant G.O.P. support, even if it means losing some of their own more liberal members in the process.

What might this bipartisan bill look like? Both sides say it is all but certain that the Democrats will have to drop their deadlines for troop withdrawal. But there is likely to be significant Republican support for another idea that Bush opposes: imposing "benchmarks" on the Iraq government. Those benchmarks in the vetoed bill covered everything from disarming militias to sharing oil revenues across ethnic groups. "If they come to us with that," says a senior G.O.P. congressional aide, "we'll take it." Republicans are also likely to insist that Democrats jettison some of the extraneous spending in the bill.

That a significant number of Republicans might now be willing to stand with Democrats toe to toe against their own President reflects not only the impatience of their constituents to see progress in Iraq but also a political reality that Bush will be facing again and again as he tries to rally G.O.P. lawmakers in the final years of his presidency. "They have a different view than he does," says a Republican strategist. "They're thinking beyond 2008."