With public opinion tilting firmly toward ending U.S. involvement in the war in Iraq, Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest (R-Md.) might have expected praise for his votes that would start to bring the troops home. Instead, at town hall meetings on the Eastern Shore, the former Marine and Vietnam combat veteran has been called everything from a coward to a traitor.

After Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) voted for a non-binding resolution opposing President Bush's troop increases, reaction in his district was so furious that local GOP officials all but invited a primary challenge to the reliable conservative. Inglis responded with multiple mailings to his constituents, fence-mending efforts and a video message on his House Web site pleading his case. On subsequent Iraq votes, he has not strayed from the Republican fold.

The experiences of the few Republicans to vote against the war help explain the remarkable unity that the party has maintained in Washington behind an unpopular president. Just four Republicans -- two in the House, two in the Senate -- voted last week for a $124 billion war funding bill that would start withdrawing troops by Oct. 1, legislation that Bush has vowed to veto this week.

That cohesion reflects the views of the GOP's core voters, who see the war in Iraq in fundamentally different terms than Democrats and political independents do, said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Voters from those groups tend to see unremitting gloom, but Republican base voters continue to see a conflict that is going reasonably well, with a decent chance of military success.

"That's the dilemma for Republicans going forward," Kohut said today. "They've got to look out for their base, but they have to acknowledge the independents have aligned themselves with the way Democrats are thinking on the issue of Iraq."

What can you really say about people that look at Iraq and see 'a conflict that is going reasonably well, with a decent chance of military success'?

I don't really look at wingnuts this way. Rather than see them as frighteningly optimistic, I tend to see them as the ones suffering from 'unremitting gloom'. Their gloom is not about progress in Iraq, necessarily, but about the prospects of America ever living in relative peace with the Islamic world. They are wholly incapable of drawing any distinctions between Sunni and Shi'ite, Turk and Persian, southern Arab versus northern Arab versus African Arab, between Pashtun and Tajik, or the Islam of Indonesia versus the Islam of Albania...

They hate and fear them all and will support any policy, no matter how expensive, unsustainable, or counterproductive, so long as that policy results in the death of hordes of Muslims. They see 600,000 dead Iraqis compared to 3,000 dead Americans and they like the ratio. Torture of Muslims is applauded. Illegally tapping their phones and reading their email is applauded. Bush created these wingnuts through his scare tactics. And now all Republicans have to live with them.

Who are the gloomy ones again?