Kerry To Attempt to Reduce GOP Senate Backing For War

When he announced his decision not to run for the 2008 nomination, one reason given by John Kerry was the need to more effectively carry on the fight to end the war in Iraq. TPM Cafe reports that Kerry is launching a campaign to put pressure on Republican Senators who are vulnerable in 2008, John Sununu, Norm Coleman, Susan Collins, and GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell.
Reportedly Kerry will be sending out an email, and will have posts at Daily Kos and Huffington Post on this effort. A copy of Kerry’s email is under the fold. Email reportedly being prepared to be sent to John Kerry’s email list:

When I first introduced legislation with Russ Feingold to set a deadline to end the open-ended policy of massive military presence in Iraq and bring our heroes home, I knew it would take a lot of work to get us to that point. And, as I’ve said to all of you before, we’ve made tremendous progress. Thanks to all of your work, we have a Democratic Congress that has passed legislation to challenge President Bush’s failed policy in Iraq and put us on a new course.

But the Republicans are putting up a roadblock to our efforts, succumbing to White House pressure to back the President on this. And the President vetoed our efforts.

It’s time for that to change. It’s time to put the pressure on these Roadblock Republicans.

The Republicans are already showing signs of cracking. Many are running away from this President’s disastrous policy. But that’s not enough; we need to splinter the GOP on this one. To do that, we need to speak to them in a voice loud enough that they can’t help but hear it, and we need to speak in the language any politician understands: grassroots pressure.

So we’re launching a unique campaign to pressure the critical points in the GOP caucus. We are targeting a few key Senators for this message: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Senators Sununu, Collins, and Coleman. The last three are already top races for 2008, and Senator McConnell is the bulwark of the GOP leadership on this.

So go here to contribute to a fund run by our friends at ActBlue that will go to the eventual Democratic nominee in those states and then write an email message to those Senators explaining why you did this.

This is an extraordinary campaign; to my knowledge, nothing quite like this has ever been done. But this money can make all the difference in each of these races, and these Senators will know it. Senator McConnell is secure in his belief that no one will be able to raise the money to challenge him. We can show that he’s wrong. The other Senators are already top targets in 2008, but they hope the power of incumbency and fundraising can save them. We can show them that the power of Washington won’t stand against the power of the people.

We can raise the stakes for them and make the pressure they feel from the people greater than the pressure they feel from the White House. And when that happens, they just might help tell this President that his policy is a disaster and we must change course.

Let’s clear the way for a new direction in Iraq – let’s insist on a policy that lives up to the sacrifice of our incredible troops.

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