McClatchy:As 'Iraq Summer' effort heats up, Republicans could sweat

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/18119.html

As 'Iraq Summer' effort heats up, Republicans could sweat
By Matt Stearns | McClatchy Newspapers


PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — As political theater goes, it wasn't much: Six polite war protesters giving short, earnest speeches in a local office of this state's junior Republican senator, John Sununu.

But with similar efforts heating up here and across the country as war policy dominates the congressional agenda, "Iraq Summer" could make Sununu and other Republican politicians sweat.

Iraq Summer is an effort by a national coalition of antiwar groups to persuade Republican members of Congress from 15 swing states to renounce support for the war and back a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops. If the lawmakers continue to support the war, activists hope that the combination of public disgust with the war and increased awareness of these members' support for it will cost them their seats in November 2008.

Led by Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, coalition members include the influential liberal group MoveOn.org Political Action Fund and a major union, the Service Employees International Union. Its tools include grass-roots action and paid advertising.

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A historical parallel is the Vietnam Summer of 1967, when antiwar protesters organized teach-ins and rallies. Many historians view that time as the turning point of public opinion about the Vietnam War, although they question whether Vietnam Summer itself had much to do with it.

"It was more a symptom of what was happening," said George Herring, a retired Vietnam historian at the University of Kentucky. Herring added, though, that "in this era, public and congressional dissent is much, much further along than it was in the summer of 1967. What's amazing is that war weariness occurred a lot faster than it did during Vietnam."