Senior House Republican aides said there was little appetite in conservative districts for a strike on Syria, and, as one put it, “the administration doesn’t have one red cent of credibility in the bank” with members of Congress.

This is precisely what worries Republicans who support a more hawkish foreign policy.

“We cannot make this about the president versus Congress or him shuffling off responsibility,” Mr. Rogers, the Michigan Republican, said Sunday on “State of the Union” on CNN. “We can have all of those debates at another time. This is really about the credibility of the United States of America standing up for an antiproliferation and use of chemical and biological weapons.”

The hope among these interventionists is that they can make the vote less about enabling a despised Democratic president and more about sending a message not just to Syria but also to a potentially more dangerous nation: Iran.

“Right now, the easy Republican vote looks like the vote against Obama,” said Michael Goldfarb, a neoconservative lobbyist and writer. “Ten days from now, a vote against Obama could look like a vote for Assad, especially if Republicans succeed in blocking U.S. action, and Assad goes on to prevail, having used chemical weapons, with Iran at his side.”