Candidates caught between principle, pragmatism

Story Highlights

• Democrats in Congress may have to vote for spending bill without timetable
• The question: Play to the base or "support the troops"?
• John Edwards, no longer in Congress, urges insistence on deadline
• Dennis Kucinich rejects war funding under any circumstances

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As President Bush and congressional leaders struggle with an appropriations bill to fund the Iraq war, the five Democrats in Congress seeking the presidency could soon face a politically thorny dilemma:

What do they do if the White House and congressional leaders reach a compromise that funds the war without setting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq?

Do they risk alienating anti-war forces in the Democratic base by voting for it? Or do they vote no and open themselves to the charge that they aren't supporting the troops?

"They're going to have to decide -- are they going to be pragmatic, are they going to talk about compromise, or are they going to play to the base?" said political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report.

The impasse on Capitol Hill has provided an opening for one Democratic presidential hopeful no longer in Congress, John Edwards, whose campaign has launched a television ad urging Congress to stand firm and reject any bill providing funding for the Iraq war that doesn't include a timetable for troop withdrawal.

"They should be strong. They should stand their ground," the former senator told CNN's "The Situation Room" on Wednesday. "Eventually, what Bush will have to do is start pulling troops out of Iraq, which is the goal anyway." (Watch Edwards challenge his competitors )

When he was in the Senate in 2003, Edwards voted to authorize Bush to use military force in Iraq, but he now says that vote was a mistake.

All four sitting senators in the 2008 Democratic race -- Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd -- voted for the $124 billion spending bill Bush vetoed Tuesday, which set a goal of having U.S. troops out of Iraq by next March. And after the veto, all four chided the president for, in their view, ignoring the will of the American people.

Obama also called upon Republicans in Congress to join Democrats in overriding the veto "and acknowledge what the president will not -- that there is no military solution to a political conflict that lies at the heart of this civil war."

But prospects for an override were so slim in the Senate that Democratic leaders didn't even make the attempt.

The lone Democratic presidential candidate in the House, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a vehement critic of the Iraq war, was among the handful of anti-war Democrats who voted against any war funding. During a candidates' debate last week in South Carolina, he chided his Senate colleagues for voting for the appropriations bill, even with a timetable for troop withdrawal.

"I think it's inconsistent to tell the American people that you oppose the war and yet you continue to fund the war," Kucinich said.

An attempt to override Bush's veto failed Wednesday in the House; Kucinich, unwilling to support either Bush's action or more war funding, voted "present."

Even before Bush's veto, lawmakers were already at work on a new bill that would strip out the timetable language and replace it with a series of benchmarks to measure the progress of the Iraqi government. However, Democratic leaders and the White House remain far apart on what would happen if those benchmarks aren't met.

Many Democrats and some Republicans support setting out specific sanctions, but the White House has instead called for a softer approach of creating "incentives" for the Iraqi government that would provide the administration more flexibility.

Bush has said repeatedly that he will veto any bill with a timetable for withdrawal. However, any compromise that drops withdrawal language is likely to inflame anti-war forces, who argue that Democratic victories in last year's elections were a mandate by the American people to stand up to the president.

For example, the liberal activist group MoveOn.org was planning "emergency" rallies across the country Wednesday to send Congress a message "to stand firm and end this war."

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