Coleman finds tables turned on Iraq
2007-07-12
Source: Associated Press
In October 2002, Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone delivered an emotional speech announcing that he would vote against a resolution authorizing war against Iraq. Hours later, his GOP challenger, Norm Coleman, held a new conference on Capitol Hill denouncing the decision, calling it "simply wrong."
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rss feedColeman pummeled Wellstone on the war issue in that campaign, arguing it showed he was out of the mainstream.
Now that public opinion has turned on the war, Coleman finds the tables turned on him as he braces for a tough re-election campaign next year. This week, two of his Democratic rivals, Al Franken and Mike Ciresi, called on Coleman to break with President Bush on the war. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ran ads criticizing the senator's stance, and an anti-war group organized calls to Coleman's office.
"It's sort of the mirror image of what we had five years ago," said Steven Schier, a political science professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. "The facts on the ground in Iraq have changed the political calculation around this about 180 degrees. The real question is how Norm Coleman positions himself. We have to watch that evolve over the next several months."
Coleman, a former Vietnam War protester who ran as a supporter of the Iraq war in 2002, has put some distance between himself and President Bush on Iraq in recent months. In February, he voted with Democrats to move forward with a resolution critical of Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq. But he also said that while he opposed sending more troops to Baghdad, he was not against more troops in other parts of Iraq.
In an interview Wednesday, Coleman said that he remains opposed to specific timetables for withdrawing troops.
"We're going to have a long-term presence in Iraq," he said. "The idea that withdrawing from Iraq would make us safer isn't a reality. It would cause a tremendous upsurge of violence in the region, it would be a tremendous success for al-Qaida. In the end it would put us at greater risk."
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