Big issues don’t die when Congress fails to resolve them; instead they return in a new guise.

Welfare reform came back to President Clinton three times before he signed a bill into law in 1995. Social Security reform is another example.

President Bush raised it as a leading agenda item after his 2004 reelection but his efforts to implement change went nowhere. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who wrapped up the Republican presidential nomination this week, is undeterred by Bush’s experience and says he will bring Social Security reform back if he moves into the White House.

The Iraq war is another perennial — and Democrats are seeking a new way to bring about their longstanding goal of bringing the armed forces home. As The Hill’s Mike Soraghan reports, House Democrats are switching messages.

They recognize that it is immaterial whether they continue to believe all their old arguments, because those arguments did not end the war or bring American troops home. Indeed, U.S. military forces in Iraq grew sharply in the “surge,” and the administration does not expect their number to fall to pre-surge levels soon.

That will not be changed by arguments that Iraq is the wrong war at the wrong time, a fiasco based on faulty or even improperly manipulated intelligence, or any of the other criticisms that have been leveled against American policy there since 2003.

So House Democrats are instead portraying their agenda as the one that will strengthen the armed forces and best maintain national security. They are building a case that ending the Iraq conflict is the only way to rebuild the spent military and ready it for future wars.

This is a refinement and extension of the Democrats’ longstanding argument that support for the troops involves repatriating them from the Middle East. This is a deft presentational move.

Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), dismissed the Democrats’ tactic, describing it as “like a broken Magic-8 Ball — no matter what question you ask, the answer is always ‘Retreat.’ ” This is a similarly deft and cutting riposte.

But the Democrats may be onto something with their new approach. Sure, the answer is the same — bring the troops home. But polls suggest Americans approve of that answer. Arriving at it by building the case for strengthening, refitting and reviving the military is likely to have more appeal than an argument that can be portrayed as pacifist or defeatist.

The rights and wrongs of policy in Iraq and the war on terror is one thing. The way those arguments are best made is quite another.