Are you like me? Are you still kicking yourself for missing out on Grand Old Party Friday night? If I had known I could have paid $70 to enjoy “a top-shelf bar” with “young Republicans between the ages of 21 and 35,” I would have been all up in that rocking my finest seersucker. To make up for missing out on GOPalooza’s night “to celebrate what’s right,” I snubbed Al Gore’s Live Earth concert Saturday to hit up a cookout in a house with four former White House interns. When I walked in the front door and saw two Young America’s Foundation posters – one with a glory shot of the president, the other with the phrase “I Love Capitalism” – I knew I had arrived.

Okay, this blog post isn’t going to be a gripping narrative of how a bleeding-heart liberal snuck into a barbeque with a bunch of conservatives and was shocked – shocked! – by all the pearls and popped collars, so bear with me. I’m getting to the point.

I usually try to keep politics and my grilled meat separate, but the Iraq War seeped into the discussion after I started talking with an intern for a Republican senator. The intern’s boss is one of a growing number of GOP senators who had previously been in Bush’s corner but are now calling for him to end the war and bring our troops home. We stood there in front of that YAF poster of George Bush and as I recited talking points from the Center for American Progress’ recommendations for a new Iraq strategy, the intern nodded her head in agreement and wondered aloud how long it would be until Bush noticed he was losing more Republicans’ support everyday. 

The answer, according to the front page of today’s New York Times, is not for long:   

White House officials fear that the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for President Bush’s Iraq strategy are collapsing around them, according to several administration officials and outsiders they are consulting. They say that inside the administration, debate is intensifying over whether Mr. Bush should try to prevent more defections by announcing his intention to begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops from the high-casualty neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities.

Bush had been hoping to stall discussion on Iraq until after Sept. 15, when the top field commander and the new American ambassador to Baghdad are scheduled to report on the troop increase that the president announced in January. But with three Republican senators – including one of Bush's strongest allies and a champion of “the surge” earlier this year – calling for withdrawal in the last two weeks, Bush might have to face the facts sooner than that…hopefully before GOPalooza Thursday at Smith Point on August 2.