Via Think Progress, we learn that General Petraeus met privately with the Republican caucus and told them he will deliver ‘real progress’ by August. According to Andrea Mitchell, who was bandying about this scoop, the Republicans are deeply skeptical and are readying to jump ship on the President.

Here are some excerpts, taken from The Chris Matthews Show.

MITCHELL: I think the Republicans are going to crack. What I’ve been told from inside the moderate center of the Republican caucus is that the vote in favor of the president this week — it was against the president but the Republicans holding for the president — was misleading. That they really are not in favor of the surge. They don’t believe it’s going to work. But they basically said the president has until August, until Labor Day. After that, if it doesn’t work, they’re running. MITCHELL: They’ll stick until September and then they’ll leave. I believe very firmly that they’re against what he is doing but they feel that General Petraeus has persuaded them that for all intents and purposes, they can’t vote a withdrawal before September. MITCHELL: Petraeus went to the Republican caucus and told them, I will have real progress to you by August. They told him, if — we’ll stick with you — KLEIN: I don’t think he did. Well, I — excuse me… MATTHEWS: Agree to disagree. KLEIN: I believe that he did not, and I think that this is a… MATTHEWS: But the country was led to believe — by the way, the nature of the surge, the word itself is an escalation, suggests a short-term upgrade of the effort. KLEIN: Counter-insurgency tactics are not a surge. They’re a glacier that takes years to work. MATTHEWS: Then we were given the wrong labeling here. We have the word surge. Andrea, we got the label from the president himself. KLEIN: The important thing this isn’t going to work. MITCHELL: The Republicans were against the surge but they felt it was fait accompli, and that they were willing to give Petraeus until August. He told them there will be real progress by August. They have told him at a caucus meeting as very, very recently, that if there isn’t progress by August — and real progress means not a day of violence and a day of sanity — that they will pull the plug.

I wish Joe Klein had been allowed to spit out whatever it was he was trying to say, because he seemed to be contradicting Mitchell’s account.

Regardless, her account is disturbing for several reasons. First, I think it is inappropriate for the commanding general in Iraq to meet privately with the Republican caucus to plot a legislative strategy for dealing with the Democrats. And that is what it appears Mitchell was reporting.

Second, if they know (or strongly believe) that the plan is not going to work (especially by August) then they have no business sending tens of thousands of troops into harms way. It’s immoral and it’s very expensive, and it will make matters worse.

Third, if the Republicans want to give the President until August to shore up the Maliki government, they should have crafted amendments to the effect, and lobbied moderate Democrats to support their amendments. There could have been some real bipartisan cooperation for such a strategy.

My last observation is that it appears support for Bush is crumbling and crumbling quite a bit faster than anticipated. We really should be quietly planning for a caretaker government to take us through the fall into the 2008 election season. The Republicans shouldn’t wait until their drubbing in November ’08 to start cleaning up their house. Their party can’t survive much more of this and it is only getting started with Waxman, Conyers, and Leahy launching a major multipronged oversight attack just before congress adjourned for their spring break.

The second half of April will be filled with hearings on incredibly damaging revelations about the Bush administration’s malfeasance. The leaders of the GOP must begin preparing themselves for the worst. Better to get it over with this year and spend next year recuperating. No one can defend this administration at this point. And they have no incentive to further sully themselves in the attempt.

It’s too bad that Obama is badly off message.