Scrambling to head off a potentially embarrassing congressional rebuke for President Bush’s troop buildup, the Los Angeles Times reports that Senate Republicans are working on alternative legislation that would attach specific “benchmarks” to the White House plan for Iraq.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the leading congressional advocate of deploying additional troops to quell the sectarian violence in Iraq, and the party’s leading presidential candidate despite being a supporter of Bush’s Iraq war policy since day one, said Thursday that he was interested in a resolution to ensure that effectiveness of the troop increase could be gauged.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), one of the president’s most loyal supporters on Capitol Hill, said he might introduce a similar resolution.

“It says we need to give it a chance,” Cornyn said, echoing the president’s State of the Union plea to lawmakers Tuesday to give his plan a chance to work. “We owe it to our servicemen and servicewomen to say what we’re for, not just what we’re against.”

The maneuvering comes after a rough two weeks for GOP lawmakers, who have been struggling to respond to Bush’s deeply unpopular proposal to increase the number of troops in Iraq by 21,500 in the coming months.

If McCain and Cornyn introduce resolutions, they could draw support away from other resolutions that directly oppose the buildup, and could cast Democratic opposition as needless impediments to progress in Iraq.

Six Republican senators have already expressed support for one of two resolutions that explicitly criticize the Bush plan, bringing Senate Democrats close to the GOP support needed to override any filibuster.

1. The more critical of the two — sponsored by Sens. Joe Biden (D-Del.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) — was approved Wednesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and sent to the Senate floor.
2. The second non-binding resolution — put together by Sens. John Warner (R-Va.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) — has the support of seven other senators, including two Republicans.

The White House has been working hard to derail both of the resolutions, which — although non-binding — would mark the first time Congress has challenged Bush’s leadership of the 4-year-old war.

Cornyn said he had talked about his plans with the White House as well as with Senate Republicans and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). Lieberman, a Democrat who won reelection as an independent in November, has been one of the strongest supporters of the president’s plan.

Yet the Republican efforts may face stronger opposition than they expect. Buoyed by public disapproval of the president and his Iraq plan, the Dems are pushing ahead with their plans to take on the White House as part of their grander effort to take back the White House.

On Thursday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) took to the floor of the Senate to accuse Vice President Dick Cheney of being out of touch with reality and delusional for boasting enormous successes in Iraq.

In another symbolic move, majority leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) suggested that the U.S. House may reverse the 2002 bill authorizing the use of force in Iraq.