For GOP Senators, Bush's Next Step in Iraq Means a Delicate Dance

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post

Senate Republicans, dreading President Bush's prime-time address tonight calling for more U.S. troops in Iraq, emerged from their weekly party luncheon yesterday displaying more dance steps than the Joffrey Ballet.

"We should listen to what the president has to say," proposed Sen. John Warner (R-Va).

"I want to hear the president's plan," Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) concurred.

"I want to see what he's proposing before I make dramatic statements," an unusually skittish Trent Lott (Miss.), the No. 2 Republican, told a thick knot of reporters.

(...)

None, however, seemed quite so tortured about the issue as Sununu, whose state suffered a Democratic landslide in the November elections. Torn between loyalty to Bush and fear of the electorate, he treated reporters to a mix of sarcasm and pedantry that brought to mind the poem Calvin Trillin wrote about the senator's father, the first President Bush's chief of staff:

If you knew what Sununu

Knows about quantum physics and Greek

And oil explorations

and most favored nations

And the secret handshake of Deke,

Maybe you too, like Sununu,

Would adopt as your principal rule

That you are the brightest, you're lit the lightest,

And everyone else is a fool

(More here.)