The tightening race in California may also explain why Mr. McCain renewed a swipe against Mr. Romney on Monday in New Jersey, when he said at a mobbed rally at the Colonial Fire House in Hamilton that Mr. Romney favored "timetables for withdrawing from Iraq".
Just ask Mitt Romney, whom Mr. McCain filleted on several occasions in the primaries, perhaps most infuriatingly for Mr. Romney when Mr. McCain misleadingly asserted that Mr. Romney favored a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.
Mr. Romney seemed to take pains Thursday to avoid getting into another bitter back and forth with Mr. McCain but did deliver a barb with his comment about Nixon, which he made at a news conference in Long Beach in reference to Mr. McCain's claim — widely labeled as misleading by news organizations — that Mr. Romney once favored a timetable for withdrawing American troops from Iraq.
But those who wanted to "stay the course" were divided too, with 30percentt saying that no timetable should be set and 16percentt favoring a timetable.
Worse, a quarter of conservative Republicans favor a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, according to the Gallup Poll.
But a Pew Research Center poll in October found that 52percentt favored a withdrawal timetable, while 43 percent opposed one.
At times, it has seemed as if the timetable favored the Muslim Brotherhood: when the Brotherhood announced, in May, that it would not attend a big Tahrir Square demonstration against the use of military tribunals for civilians, some liberals saw it as a sign of a tacit deal with the Army.
An official account of the committee's most recent meeting in July affirmed that "almost all participants" favored Mr. Bernanke's timetable, provided that "economic conditions improved broadly as expected".
Secondly, the primary timetable favors him.
Democrats favor such a timetable, but it is anathema to Republican candidates who support the war.
Rep. Bruce Braley, a freshman Iowa Democrat who favors a firm timetable for Iraq, heard the pain when he met with the families of two fallen soldiers, Pfc.
