Posted on 03/19/2006 9:21:33 AM PST by Cannoneer No. 4
The authority of the Bush Administration is falling apart - in its heartland.
With almost three years of George Bush's presidency to go, most Republicans in Congress have one political goal before the mid-term congressional elections in November: desert him as fast as they can.
The discipline of the first Bush Administration is gone. The Republican-dominated, rubber-stamp Congress is no more. Every day, another Republican member of Congress declares that Bush is a great guy, that they love him dearly, but that he has lost the plot.
Sack people they say. One day it's Donald Rumsfeld. The next day it's Dick Cheney. A day later it's the whole White House staff. Do something, Mr President, they say. And by the way, they say, we love you dearly, but most of your policies stink.
Come to think of it, it's all of them, from immigration where they reckon Bush wants to flood the country with illegal immigrants from Mexico, to the Medicare prescription drug plan for America's seniors that is out of control in terms of its cost and which is so complicated that elderly Americans can be seen weeping at pharmacy counters across the country.
No opportunity by Republicans to criticise Bush - with a heavy heart of course - is missed. When commercial radio shock-jocks suddenly discovered that the Bush Administration had approved the takeover of six American ports by a Dubai company - by Arabs! - the Republican leaders in Congress were in danger of causing each other injury as they made the dash for the TV cameras and microphones to say, in essence, that Bush had lost his marbles.
The Democrats, meanwhile, are more or less all over the place on more or less every issue, except the Arab takeover of those American ports where their outrage was outrageous and, frankly, racist. The Congress of the world's sole superpower appears to be an undisciplined rabble.
On the key issues that Americans are really worried about - and Iraq is overwhelmingly the most important one - neither Republicans nor Democrats in Congress have a clue what to do.
Neither does Bush, who increasingly looks and sounds as if he is weighed down by the relentless bad news from Iraq and the daily crises and political missteps that have plagued his second term.
It was in this political environment that the Republican Party's Southern Leadership Conference met last week in Memphis. The highlight of the two-day conference was a straw poll of the 2000 or so Republican Party activists and supporters of the leading candidates for the party's 2008 presidential nomination.
The one candidate who wasn't in Memphis and was not part of the poll was former New York City mayor Rudi Giuliani who, in poll after poll, is far and away the people's choice - that includes Republicans - for the Republican Party's 2008 nomination.
Most political analysts seem to agree that Giuliani represents the Republican Party's best hope of winning in 2008, but they also agree that he has a snowball's chance in hell of winning the nomination.
This is not because he is seen as wishy-washy on the war in Iraq, the war on terror or even on the need to cut government spending programs, including welfare.
He's not. Indeed, in some ways, he's a more orthodox conservative than Bush. But Giuliani is pro-choice on abortion, which for many conservative Republicans means he's in favour of murder and therefore unfit to be president. And he's "soft on gay marriage".
For the Republican Party's social conservative base, those people who turned out in great numbers in 2004 to give Bush a clear if narrow victory, "values issues" are those that energise them.
That's why at that Republican conference in Memphis, Iraq was hardly mentioned while abortion and the moral threats posed by Hollywood and gay marriage were discussed endlessly.
If no pro-abortion politician has any hope of winning the Republican Party's 2008 nomination, no anti-abortion politician, so the conventional political wisdom goes, has any hope of being the Democratic candidate. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is the mirror image of the Republican Party's social conservatives.
The culture wars in America are real and alive and remain potent politically. The culture wars have pushed the Republicans to the right and the Democrats to the left, which means neither party has a substantial moderate wing.
On many issues, neither party has the support of the majority of Americans. On abortion for instance, a majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal in many - but not all - cases.
A number of conservative states are planning abortion laws that would make abortion illegal no matter what the circumstances, including rape and incest and a serious risk to the woman's health.
By next year, when the Supreme Court comes to consider constitutional challenges to these laws, abortion will be a major political issue. And not because it is a vote-decider for most Americans, but because it energises the bases of both parties. The party that gets the vote out is the party that wins.
So not only is Congress a rabble, not only are Republicans running away from Bush as fast as they can, not only do the Democrats seem a lot like the Labor Party, but it is a real possibility that both the November elections and the 2008 presidential election could be decided on "values issues" that don't matter a hill of beans to many Americans.
Michael Gawenda is United States correspondent.
Two main points:
1. there is a hollow core to the unpopularity - a hunk of it is based on unfortunate events which won't ultimately cause a vote to switch
2. Karl Rove is still on his game. As November approaches, Democrats will be squeezed by their support for ridiculous policies.
Michael Gawenda is alo a socialist. He must not know who the Rats are in this country.
I think conservatives should continue to do the right thing.
Embrace the President when his policies are the right ones, and act as the loyal opposition when they aren't.
And continue to fight the Left...
It isn't personal, it's about the future of the country.
My observation actually goes back to the Republican "response" to one of Bill Clinton's state-of-the-union addresses. I think it was 1998. Bill Clinton proposed a bunch of new programs, and all the Republican responder could do was offer up a bunch of "lite" versions of the same thing.
The proper way to attack the socialists would have been for Bush et al. to point out that every single time the government gets involved trying to make something cheaper for a select group of people, it causes the market price of that good or service to skyrocket to the point that it soon costs more for everyone--including the supposed beneficiaries of the program--than it would have if the program had never existed.
Bush et al. should have pointed out that part of the Democrats' definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result.
Republicans need to come clean and admit that they've let themselves be pushed around by liars and thieves, but make a promise that they will call the thieves out on the carpet and stop doing business with them.
Those who disagree and want to improve the situation are one thing. Those who disagree and only want to improve their situation is quite another. Many of the problems with this ship of state can be traced to the RINOs and overly ambitions politicians onboard.
The people who could rightfully described as moderates are fine, though the media usually refers to those people as "right-wing conservatives". If the media refer to a person as "moderate", that really means (1) the person is really a liberal, and (2) the person hasn't done anything terribly bad. If a politician does something very bad or crooked, the media will refer to him as "conservative" regardless of his ideological stance.
While I agree with most of your premise, I must take issue with this. In order for the true base to be represented (I consider myself a true conservative) we would have to have been represented by a true conservative. Bush is not that. He's at best a moderate at worst a socially liberal republican. The bush-bots, who blindly follow Bush, are therefore by definition not the conservative base.
I feel fully underrepresented by Bush. He is not far enough to the right either fiscally or socially. That is where the animosity comes from. The Republican Party, as represented by Bush, is NOT a conservative party.
Had we all backed the president during the second term where he had promised to fix most of these concerns, we would not be talking about this today and that is as simple as I can make it.
Other than Social Security, what did he try to fix? He has pushed the Medicaid Prescription Act, has pushed for more spending in the Dept. of Education and kow-towed to too many liberals like Kennedy and Clinton to engender the conservative base. He has alienated us instead of consolidating us.
Stop screwing up and people will get off Bush's back.
The problem in Washington DC is that after a few years they think that they tell us what to do.
The way it works is that we tell them what to do or they can get the hell out of office.
If Bush doesn't like the deal he can quit.
"I believe Bush is the best president we have had since Regan..."
Not a hard feat considering his competition we pretty crappy leaders.
"...and one of the all time best."
If you like big intrusive government, and wars where we let foreign powers fight in proxy without even attempting to stop them.
I googled this Michael Gawenda, and in just a couple of minutes I sized the guy up. He has an agenda. Nuff said.
Actually the term for disagreeing with the President has now morphed into labaling one a "Bush-Bashing xenophobic unappeaser."
Yeah, I have checked the posts of a couple of these bush/bashers going back for quite awhile.
First of all, all of their posts are negative and they bash GWB but not the left. I mean if "there's no difference" and "Bush is just as bad" etc., you would think they would also be after the real left too.
Instead, if they mention the libs at all, it's usually something like, 'I'd rather have a real lib in office - at least you'd know what to expect'.
I knew it without the pic. He's just another RAT journalist with a passion to defeat any Pubbie in 2006. Also, he hates Bush.
I don't know about "right wing", but there were some in the coalition who smelled blood after the Miers nomination and many of these same people, some not so conservative, jumped on the port deal as well.
Geez Louise !!!!!!
Agreed, but Romney said the opposite. He said we can't cut taxes anymore until we cut spending and I totally disagree. We'd never get tax cuts using that philosophy because there ain't no way spending is ever going to be cut voluntarily in D.C.
If Rudy is heathly, and runs hard for the nomination, he will secure it. That is my prediction. Abortion is not the litmus test issue. Folks look for competence and leadership, particularly in the current environment. Romney will be strong too, for the same reasons, but Rudy is Rudy.
Romney cut spending in Massachussets big time. Who would have thought it could be done?
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