Moment of Truth.

By Peter Beinart

Next time you listen to Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani, the two announced Republican front runners for 2008, try playing this game: count how many times they use some variation of Sept. 11, terrorism or jihad. Then count how many times they utter the word Iraq. When Romney gave a foreign policy speech at Yeshiva University in April, the score was 19 to 3. In an address at the Citadel in May, Giuliani's score was 35 to 2.

Here's what is happening: Republican voters, the folks Romney and Giuliani need to win over, want their party's nominee to be as tough as nails in the war on terrorism. And they don't want him to bash President George W. Bush on Iraq, because, well, that's what Democrats do. But--and this is where things get tricky--they don't exactly want him to support Bush's Iraq policy either. Recent polls suggest that while most Republicans oppose a complete withdrawal from Iraq, they'd prefer a smaller U.S. presence, ensconced in bases far from Iraq's bloody cities, training Iraqis to do the fighting. In short, they want what the Baker-Hamilton commission proposed last fall--exactly the position Bush rejected when he ordered the surge.

Luckily for Giuliani and Romney, most Republicans don't associate them with the surge, as they do John McCain. Most either don't know what the GOP front runners think or think they agree with them and support a Baker-Hamilton-style drawdown. In a July Hotline poll, only 17% of Republicans knew that Giuliani opposes any troop withdrawal from Iraq, and only 12% knew that Romney did. For both men, that's good news. They don't want to be identified with a policy that's unpopular even among Republicans, let alone the rest of America. But they don't want a high-profile break with Bush either, because most Republicans still like the guy and figure that publicly opposing him means jumping into bed with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Romney and Giuliani's solution: when asked about Iraq, they talk about terrorism. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Romney argued that "whether or not the current 'surge' in troop levels in Iraq succeeds," the U.S. faces "challenges that go far beyond any single nation or conflict." Giuliani told Fox News's Sean Hannity, "Whether Iraq turns out successfully ... we're still going to be at war." Romney and Giuliani also bash the Democrats as defeatists who don't recognize the jihadist threat and who want us to leave Iraq with our tail between our legs. In this way, they emphasize their antiterrorism toughness while keeping their Iraq views fuzzy. This gives them room to embrace a significant troop withdrawal next year once they have their party's nomination in hand.

So far, the strategy has worked beautifully. But there's a problem. One way Romney and Giuliani have evaded clear answers on the surge is by delaying the question until September, when General David Petraeus will report on its progress. Now September is here. Petraeus will probably oppose any immediate troop withdrawal, deferring any drawdown until next spring. Bush and most conservative pundits will demand that the surge continue into 2008. And Romney and Giuliani will find it harder to bob and weave. The press, which has given both men an easy ride on the issue, may start turning the screws. With luck, so will McCain, who has paid a heavy price for his Iraq candor. Even the White House could get into the act. From the President's perspective, after all, Romney and Giuliani haven't exactly been profiles in courage: they've let Democrats punch the stuffing out of his Iraq policy without offering much of a defense.

So, what will Romney and Giuliani do if forced to finally come clean? They'll back the surge. Romney is running as the conservative candidate, so he can't alienate Iraq hard-liners. Neither can Giuliani, given his tough-on-terrorism persona. But once they back the surge, they'll get a taste of what McCain has been experiencing all year. The more they're defined by support for the war, the more Bush's unpopularity will become their own, especially among independents, the people who have turned against McCain en masse. Backing the surge will instantly weaken them in the general election, because if they do eventually pivot in favor of some withdrawal, it will look like a flip-flop.

The best thing for Romney and Giuliani would be for the White House and Congress to halt the surge and agree on a phased withdrawal. Then they could go back to talking about 9/11 while Iraq recedes as a partisan issue. But that's not likely to happen, because when it comes to Iraq, Bush is ignoring the polls. Romney and Giuliani should try it sometime.

Beinart is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations