Boehner and Cantor are today’s McCain and Graham:

Speaker John A. Boehner said on Tuesday that he would “support the president’s call to action” in Syria after meeting with President Obama, giving the president a crucial ally in the quest for votes in the House.

Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican, quickly joined Mr. Boehner to say he also backed Mr. Obama.

“Understanding that there are differing opinions on both sides of the aisle, it is up to President Obama to make the case to Congress and to the American people that this is the right course of action, and I hope he is successful in that endeavor,” Mr. Cantor said in a statement.

Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. summoned Mr. Boehner and other Republican and Democratic leaders to the White House as they intensified their push for Congressional approval of an attack on Syria. Conservative House Republicans have expressed deep reluctance about the president’s strategy, and winning Mr. Boehner’s approval could help the president make inroads with a group that has not supported him on most issues in the past.

On the Democrat side, Sen. Dianne Feinstein has declared for the president.

Unless there is a rebellion in the Congressional ranks, in both parties, we are going to do this thing. We are going to bomb Syria to make Syria safer for al-Qaeda and other Islamists. This country never, ever learns. Jim Antle writes:

Although Obama has said he favors only very limited strikes to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for his apparent use of chemical weapons, his administration’s proposed language authorizing the use of military of force extends beyond that.

What the president is asking for imposes no limits on possible targets and would arguably allow him to widen the war to Hezbollah or even Iran if a link to weapons of mass destruction could be asserted. Despite the president’s pledge of no “boots on the ground,” the authorization clearly would allow him to deploy ground troops “as he determines to be necessary and appropriate” to the administration’s Syria objectives.

All of these determinations, by the way, would be made by the president. Nowhere does the proposed authorization of military force require him to go back to Congress to escalate the war.

Follow the link within Antle’s quote to learn more about how broad this proposed resolution would be. It is a blank check for another war. Rand Paul is making a stand against it. Let’s hear more from him — a lot more!

UPDATE: National Review‘s editors have endorsed the strike, though with qualifications and anti-Obama muttering:

Any strike shouldn’t be a pinprick or necessarily a one-off but part of a broader, longer-term plan to topple Assad and defeats his allies. This means strengthening elements of the Syrian opposition we can trust, with arms and training; it means crafting and leading an international coalition committed to a post-Assad Syria; it means staying engaged beyond the next few weeks.

“Elements of the Syrian opposition we can trust”? Such people exist? We are going to get played like a fiddle once again. Who is the Syrian Chalabi? And what on earth is “an international coalition committed to a post-Assad Syria”? Which nations are going to be willing to put troops on the ground to pacify the hell that will be Syria after Assad falls? We can’t even pacify Afghanistan, despite all the money and firepower we have unleashed against that country!

Happily, NR reports that the Senate GOP leadership — McConnell and Cornyn — aren’t going to be so quick to support the president.