* Obama expected to recommit to Afghan war plan
* Obama needs to show Americans strategy is working
* Republicans broadly supportive of strategy.
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By Ross Colvin
WASHINGTON, Dec 15 (Reuters) - When President Barack Obama delivers the results of his Afghan war review on Thursday, he will recommit to a strategy that threatens to estrange him even further from a large part of his political base.
They are already angry with him over a series of big legislative and public policy issues, a losing election campaign season and a tax deal he has brokered with rival Republicans.
"He is going to feel the heat from the very segment of his own political party that was so unhappy with his tax deal," said Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
"They will see him as caving in to the demands of the more hawkish members of his administration and the military."
Republicans, who broadly support his strategy, will give him political cover in Congress, supporting military policy and spending in Afghanistan. But anger among the Democratic Party's left, whose support was so critical to Obama's election in 2008, could pose a growing problem for the president as he approaches the 2012 election.
Still, Obama has time on his side to show his plan works. Military experts say it is too early to tell whether the strategy he put in place a year ago to break the momentum of a resilient Taliban enemy will achieve more than the limited military gains seen so far.
But Obama will be under pressure on Thursday to show Americans that his decision to send 30,000 more troops and ramp up U.S. involvement in the unpopular war is paying dividends.
"If he wasn't able to show at least some convincing evidence of progress that is above a minimal bar then the American public would have no confidence in the current direction," Markey said.
Obama is expected to say on Thursday there has been some progress but that challenges remain and more time is needed to show results. U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan have talked up military gains, but other U.S. officials, including reportedly the Central Intelligence Agency, have questioned the basis of those claims.
OBAMA'S WAR
Obama is in a political bind.
He is looking for an exit strategy that would allow him to end the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan by 2014 and withdraw the bulk of U.S. troops, but his main partner, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has proven unreliable and has done little to improve governance and clamp down on rampant corruption, two issues seen as critical to the U.S. withdrawal strategy.
Obama wants to get out of Afghanistan but at the same time he wants to leave behind a stable government that can ensure the country does not again become a haven for militant groups targeting the United States.
The final words of Obama's envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, who died in a hospital on Monday, underlined the president's predicament.
"You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan," the Washington Post reported Holbrooke as telling his doctors.
At the moment Americans pay little attention to Afghanistan. It's out of sight and largely out of mind because of worries about anemic economic growth.
There is little public debate about why the United States is still in Afghanistan after invading to oust the Taliban for harboring the al Qaeda plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
But that could change if U.S. soldiers continue to die in large numbers -- a record 477 have been killed so far this year -- and the U.S. economy remains in the doldrums, increasing scrutiny of the annual ${esc.dollar}113 billion bill for the war.
If violence continues to worsen next year and the body count mounts, Obama may come under pressure to quicken the drawdown of troops, due to begin in July, and narrow the mission from a broad counter-insurgency campaign to counter-terrorism operations.
Analysts say a key test of Obama's strategy will be next spring when the Taliban's "fighting season" starts. The militant group is expected to ramp up attacks to maintain pressure on U.S forces and their NATO allies.
If Obama is unable to show real progress in the coming months, then the war could become another source of friction with his core, anti-war, base, in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election.
But analysts say that won't pose a risk to Obama's chances of re-election unless he faces a primary challenge from the left wing of his party, or if Republicans campaign against him by questioning his effectiveness as commander-in-chief.
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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