WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans killed President Bush’s Iraq war funding request Thursday in order to try to save it.

The Iraq funding measure collapsed in the House as anti-war Democrats and Republicans unhappy about added domestic funding combined to kill $163 billion to support U.S. troops overseas.

Well, for now at least. The Senate is sure to revive the money next week, though Republicans won’t get the speedy vote they’re demanding on a war funding bill clean of Democratic priorities.

The unlikely House coalition formed when Republicans expected to provide the winning margin for the Iraq and Afghanistan funding instead sat out the vote in protest.

The GOP revolt was a response to Democratic strong-arm tactics in advancing the must-pass measure, as well as their efforts to add money for the unemployed and an expansion of GI education benefits.

The defeat of the Iraq funding measure came on a 149-141 tally. Nearly two-thirds of the House’s Democrats voted against continuing to fund the war as 132 Republicans sat out the vote in protest.

Democrats then forced through a nonbinding plan seeking an exit from Iraq by December of next year. The 227-196 vote on the measure broke mostly along party lines.

Thirty-two Republicans joined Democrats on a 256-166 vote to sharply boost education benefits for Iraq-Afghanistan veterans under the GI Bill — despite an accompanying tax surcharge on the wealthy and small businesses — and voted to provide a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits.

The practical effect of the GOP protest is likely to be minimal. While it kills the war funding component of the bill for now, the Senate is sure to revive it next week.

The White House weighed in again Thursday with a promise to veto the bill over the non-war spending, the new tax surcharge and restrictions on Bush’s ability to conduct the war in Iraq.

Republicans said the strategy by Democrats to load the war funding measure with non-war provisions like extending unemployment benefits unnecessarily delays getting funding to troops in the field.

But some Senate Republicans didn’t get the message.

Conservatives Larry Craig, R-Idaho and Richard Shelby, R-Ala., for example, sent out numerous news releases crowing about domestic add-ons such as $450 million to combat Western wildfires and $75 million to help commercial fishermen in a substantially more expensive Senate companion measure that cleared the Appropriations panel Thursday afternoon.

In the House, each side accused the other of using the must-pass troop funding bill for political advantage.

“We’re playing political games on the backs of our troops — you know it,” said Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. “All this bill’s going to do is delay the process for weeks and weeks and weeks while we play political games.”