Carmakers are regrouping this week to see if they can find a way to head off or least modify an increase in federal fuel economy standards passed last week by the U.S. Senate.

The automakers say the new targets will lead to a dramatic downsizing of the American vehicle fleet over the next decade.

Meanwhile, consumers and environmental groups celebrated the triumph of the new 35-mpg rules, which signaled the end of the alliance between Democratic-leaning organized labor and Republican-leaning business advocates, which had kept changes in CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards bottled up in Congress for a generation.

While some analysts described it as sign of the domestic auto industry's declining influence, it also was the result of shift in attitudes in Congress that had little to do with the size of lobbying budgets of the Big Three orToyota or the United Auto Workers, all of which combined to lobby against the measure.

It's now a political fact of life that environmentalists have increased their clout inside the Democratic Party caucuses over the past ten years. In addition, Democratic strategists such as Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-Ill.) have made energy security and independence one of the party's new battle cries. Meanwhile, Republicans have moved to toughen the fuel-economy standards as a way of keeping faith with the party's traditional concern for national security, which have served the party well since Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980.

Sen. John McCain, one of the Republican Party's most respected figures on national security issues, has described the current CAFE standards as unacceptable and became one of the champions of the tougher fuel-economy standards. President George W. Bush is also backing tougher fuel-economy standards.

Public disenchantment with the long war in Iraq, which is being waged at the center of the Middle Eastern oil field, also has helped in developing a broad consensus in favor of raising the fuel economy standards. In the end, the complaints by company executives and union officials about the jobs, physics, technology, and unattainable goals didn't matter much, given the daily carnage in Iraq.

The same dynamic will be at play in the House of Representatives, though carmakers are hoping against hope that Rep. John Dingell, the chairman of the House committee on Energy and Commerce, can somehow re-write the bill. Dingell, however, isn't quite as powerful as he once was.

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House and the quintessential environmentally minded Democrat, has already ordered to Dingell to stop writing legislation, which could have made it much more difficult for states like California and those in New England to promulgate their own rules curbing emissions of carbon dioxide.