Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole says it's better to cut deep than not at all, but California Rep. Buck McKeon wants to spare defense spending.
Some Republicans see the issue as a winning one for them. If sequestration happens and the cuts cause the economy to tank, they can point fingers at Democrats. But others for whom politics is local, there is a risk.
If sequestration was to go into effect, some strategists see an opportunity for Democrats to take back some congressional seats and tie GOP candidates to their Republican colleagues who let it happen.
"What we are seeing today is the last gasp of the Tea Party insurgency because once Tea Party policies start impacting voters it will become apparent how thin the support actually is," says Loren Thompson, chief operation officer of the Lexington Institute, a national security group in Washington. "There has never been a hard lined constituency on deficit reduction. The politics are on the side of jobs, therefore it is going to be hard to resist when constituents complain about cuts."
Thompson says being a Republican not opposed to sequestration in a military district is "a political death wish."
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