EVERYONE’S HEARD of the 9/11 Democrats. The 9/11 Democrats are people like actor Ron Silver, comedian Dennis Miller and blogger/author Roger L. Simon. Stunned by the events of September 11, these people surveyed the political landscape and developed new views. A seismic event changed them and changed their politics.

A less noble creature is currently crawling out from Washington D.C.’s swamps. These are the 11/7 Republicans. Stunned by the election results of November 7, these Republican office holders surveyed the political landscape and decided that they had to distance themselves from the Iraq war to have any chance of preserving their political viability. While the 9/11 Democrats worry about the future of the country and matters of the highest principle, the 11/7 Republicans worry about their own craven interests in a completely unprincipled fashion.

THE POSTER CHILD FOR THE 11/7 Republicans is Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon. Oregon is a blue state (or a purple state if you’re a cockeyed Republican optimist), and Smith is up for re-election in 2008.

After the 11/7 election results, Smith had several epiphanies regarding the Iraq war, epiphanies he shared with the country on December 8. In an address that ephemerally made him a hero to the inmates in the virtual insane asylum that is the Daily Kos, Smith distanced himself from the war effort that he had long supported. From the well of the Senate, he forthrightly declared, “I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal.”

Declaring the Bush administration “criminal” may knock ‘em dead in the liberal blogosphere, but conservatives were decidedly underwhelmed.

Some conservative cynics even questioned the timing of Smith’s revelations. In the same address, he confided to the nation that he had been nursing growing doubts about the war for quite some time. The fact that he unburdened himself of these doubts only after the cataclysm of 11/7 seemed a tad curious. After all, if he felt the prosecution of the war was perhaps “criminal,” surely he shouldn’t have sat on such sentiments merely because there was an election afoot. That wouldn’t have been much of a profile in courage.

As a matter of fact, Smith’s entire December 8 address didn’t register very high on the political courage meter. Putting the fulminating against the administration aside, it was impossible to determine what Smith wanted or was recommending with his December 8 stem-winder. Regarding the then-recently released Iraq Study Group report, Smith was a veritable profile in ambivalence. At one point in the speech, he “welcome(d) the report” and observed that the “commission has just done some, I suppose, good work.” A few paragraphs later, he was less committal, downgrading his assessment to, “The Iraq Study Group has given us some ideas. I don't know if they are good or not.” A mere two sentences later, Smith castigated the report for counseling a strategy of “cut and walk.”

Even after his December 8 speech, Smith was not done with his amusing displays of intellectual incoherence. After the plans for the surge were announced, Smith released a statement labeling it “the President’s Hail Mary pass.” And yet he proclaimed himself a stalwart supporter of the troops, even while he publicly belittled their mission and their chances of success.

SO WHAT DOES GORDON SMITH, the poster child for the 11/7 Republicans, really want? Regrettably, Senator Smith was unable to grant me an interview, but I did get to chat for a few minutes with his spokesman, R.C. Hammond.

Hammond bristled at my suggestion that Smith’s comments on the war had anything to do with the Senator’s reelection campaign. Quite the contrary, according to Hammond, the two aren’t related at all. When I raised the issue regarding the odd timing of Smith choosing to unburden himself of his concerns only after the 11/7 cataclysm, an annoyed Hammond assured me that Smith’s December 8 speech was the result of six months of analysis and reflection.

As regards the Gordon Smith Plan for Iraq, the key ingredients seem to be saying “whatever the generals want” while offering yet more intellectual incoherence. For instance, Hammond says that the Smith plan would forbid Americans from engaging anything that has the fetid stench of sectarian strife. So while Smith would allow U.S. troops to engage al Qaeda fighters, the hostile, destructive and allied-with-Iran Sadr militia would be off limits. The Smith plan, as expressed in his December 8 address and as Hammond explained it to me, would have American troops withdraw to the “horizon.” Whether the “horizon” is in Sadr City, Anbar or Okinawa has been left maddeningly undefined. Continued...