Senate Democrats moved Tuesday to add an expanded hate-crimes ban to the defense authorization, giving them more time to court GOP votes for a new Iraq withdrawal plan but dimming the must-pass bill’s chances for passage this week.

Republican leaders seized on the hate crimes measure, on which Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) quickly moved to end debate, as an unnecessary distraction from a defense bill that has seen several antiwar amendments go down to defeat. Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the GOP’s conference chairman, said the temporary lull in Iraq debate indicated that Democrats may have conceded their fight to force a troop drawdown in Iraq.

Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.) urged Democrats to complete work quickly on the defense authorization before it becomes a magnet for extraneous amendments.

“Democrats have got to decide how much Iraq is enough,” Lott said. “Is it every day? Every week? Can it be every three months?”

Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), Republicans’ conference vice chairman, echoed the challenge to the majority: “They’ve been at it for four months. They’ve lost essentially every vote so far. It’s pretty clear that people want to see security on the ground improve.”

Several key Democrats dismissed talk of throwing in the towel on Iraq. The search continues, they said, for a war proposal that would satisfy centrists uncomfortable with a fixed troop withdrawal date and liberals committed to forcing the president’s hand.

“It’s a work in progress,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who continues to work with Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) on softening their Iraq redeployment plan. “We still have an opportunity … to bring up another amendment.”

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) met Reid this week to discuss his bipartisan pitch to shift the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq away from the front lines. Nelson said he did not yet sense a momentum within the caucus away from Iraq.

“This is not a situation where anybody’s trying to run the clock out,” Nelson said. “We’ve got the time. The question is, can we get the votes?”

Nelson acknowledged that Democrats seeking the political sweet spot on Iraq soon would get new opportunities to press the issue. Declaring his intention to pass the defense bill by next week, Reid left the door open to a future Iraq withdrawal debate on the defense spending bill or the supplemental spending request for the war that the White House is expected to release this week.

“I hope we can come up with something that’s bipartisan in nature,” Reid told reporters. “But as happens with the Senate all the time, the clock always works against us, and we’ve got to complete this legislation.”

The hate crimes bill, authored by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), would provide new federal authority and assistance to prosecute offenses tied to racial, religious and sexual discrimination. Crimes of discrimination against sexual orientation also would acquire federal penalties under the bill, which has aroused the ire of several evangelical and social conservative groups.

The Senate added a similar version of the hate-crimes measure to the 2004 defense authorization before it was stripped out in conference talks with the House. If Republican senators who backed the previous version maintained their support, the hate crimes bill would pass with 69 votes despite facing a veto threat from President Bush.

But GOP leaders appeared poised to rally opposition to the hate-crimes bill this time around.

“I’m hopeful that we can shut down both sides” from offering extraneous amendments, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) said, adding that the hate-crimes language “has no business on” the defense bill.

Kennedy, however, said the Pentagon authorization is an appropriate vehicle for his bill. Reid’s cloture motion sets up a likely Thursday vote.

“Hate crimes are a form of domestic terrorism,” Kennedy said on the floor. “They send a message that some Americans deserve to be victimized because of who they are.”

One Democratic aide said the GOP complaints about the hate-crimes bill held no water after the minority forced consideration of a resolution condemning the liberal group MoveOn.org for its criticisms of Gen. David Petraeus.

“These are amendments they knew would come up,” the Democratic aide said. “We spent an entire day last week trying to determine whether we’d condemn an ad.”

Meanwhile, the Senate was slated late Tuesday night to consider an amendment urging the Bush administration to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. Several Democrats were likely to support the measure despite the opposition of anti-war groups that are pivotal to the party’s base.

Tom Andrews, national director of Win Without War and a key member of the Americans Against Escalation in Iraq coalition, said the amendment “opens the door for U.S. military options within Iran.” He likened the Iran measure to the 2002 Iraq war authorization, which has become a political albatross for several of the 29 Democratic senators who then backed it.