Assets

Via Moira Whelan, a fun little video wherein Bush proclaims himself a "strong asset" for Republican candidates followed by a little reality check:

In terms of politics, rather than substance, this is the reality of the Iraq debate. Organizations like the Victory Caucus and Freedom's Watch have succeeding in creating a situation where few Republicans dare mount even token levels of opposition to Bush's war policy and essentially nobody is prepared to break with the administration on it in a way that matters. Their fate has really become inextricably tied to that of the war -- the real war in the real world, and not a PR war about the surge or anything else. Six months from now, Republicans are going to ask for six months' more time, and then six months after that they'll be heading into an election asking for . . . six months more time. And this'll be 24 months after Republicans first started losing seats because people had had enough of this.

UPDATE: It's worth emphasizing that pressure from the fanatically pro-war right has been one of the most undercovered stories in American politics. Here's Rep. Jim Walsh (R-NY) taking heat from the Onondaga County Conservative Party for what amounts to merely symbolic efforts to distance himself from the endless war party.

Comments

Any excuse to play Gnarls Barkley works for me.

Posted by Dilan Esper | September 21, 2007 2:00 PM

Republican strategists are correct in wanting Republican office holders to stay loyal to Bush and supportive of the war. When the full scope of the calamity in Iraq is finally exposed it will be the fault of Democrats it all went to hell. The public will believe Fox News and the White House and every other member of the Wingnut Wurlitzer declaring if not for evil liberals democracy would be flourishing in Iraq. Why run from Bush, he isn't responsible for any of this? Democrats stole the key and pilfered the strawberries, everyone knows that.

Posted by steve duncan | September 21, 2007 2:19 PM

but wait! how can this be? only democrats have to deal with "special interests."

more seriously, i suppose when your party has evolved over a quarter century to an increasingly authoritarian perspective, breaking ranks becomes ever more difficult psychologically and practically.

Posted by howard | September 21, 2007 2:20 PM

Some people are afraid (like Steve Duncan) that this will all backfire on the Democrats. But that's not the case.

This is the price of party discipline. There is no mastermind behind the curtains in the Republican party right now. The party is setup so that critical actors at the top control everything, but its running along headless for now. And the same ridiculous level of discipline that allows them to constantly double down and reraise back at the Democrats until they back down... sometimes you hit the end of your bankroll. That's when reality is stacked against you. The Republicans are paying a huge political price for this war.

Four years from now, who knows? Unless the Republican machine completely breaks down they'll be back again with a Democratic party still not ready to handle them. The public has a short term memory and today's victories won't translate to the next election cycle.

Just don't assume that this is all part of the plan. The Republicans are not looking forward to losing the presidency plus further losses in the house and the senate. They just aren't able to break out of the pack that's headed off the cliff.

Posted by mpowell | September 21, 2007 3:20 PM

When it really mattered back in 2003, the Dems supported the war. And they've been funding it ever since. It's hard to be a credible anti-war party with that track record hanging around their necks.

And Given Hillary's donor profiles, count on the war going on LONG after she's elected prez.

Posted by kafka | September 21, 2007 3:38 PM

The Republicans know that if we pull out while Bush is still president and the place descends into chaos or an Iran-friendly theocracy takes over (the two most likely choices), they will be electoral toast for a generation. For them It is imperative that the U.S. remain until a Democrat is in the Whitehouse.

Posted by Jose Padilla | September 21, 2007 3:47 PM

the comments that several people made here about how the republican party wants any iraq "collapse" to be on a democratic president and congress's watch are, of course, on the money.

still, it suddenly brought to mind (of all people) LBJ's willingness to risk the democratic party's electoral fortunes in order to do the right thing and pass the Civil Rights act and Voting Rights act.

i don't think there is anyone in a position of power in the republican party who spends even a minute concerning him or herself with doing the "right" thing....

Posted by howard | September 21, 2007 4:07 PM

When it really mattered back in 2003, the Dems supported the war. And they've been funding it ever since. It's hard to be a credible anti-war party with that track record hanging around their necks.

By comparison to Vietnam, the Dems own this war hardly at all, although of course they're not blameless.

It's rare for the initial support for a war to break down solidly along partisan lines. The Gulf War, maybe, but I'm not sure I know of any other examples. In 1940, for example, there were still a lot of anti-war Republicans out there, but their presidential candidate supported the war (well, aid to the Allies, which amounted to the same thing).

Posted by Steve | September 21, 2007 4:13 PM

He's half-right about being an asset.

Posted by JJ | September 21, 2007 4:23 PM

He's half-right about being an asset.

Posted by JJ | September 21, 2007 4:23 PM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Actually 60% right.

Posted by steve duncan | September 21, 2007 4:59 PM

"It's worth emphasizing that pressure from the fanatically pro-war right has been one of the most undercovered stories in American politics."

Good point. The mainstream media is too busy reporting about how the fanatically pro-defeat left has gone after Democrats like Rep. Brian Baird, who had the temerity to change his mind about the merits of supporting the military operation after he got back from Iraq.

Posted by Fred | September 21, 2007 7:26 PM

Well, you know, Fred, for about the last 3 years every poll has shown Independent voters MUCH more in favor of the Democratic Party than of the GOP on most issues -- emphatically including the war. It's the GOP which, at the moment, has sealed itself off more from the opinion of the general public -- which presumably explains why they're still trailing the Democrats by about 12 points (compared to the their 8-point loss last time) in literally every poll of the 2008 Congressional vote. That is, as Matt says, right now the GOP bubble is far thicker than the Democratic one -- and they're very likely to pay for it big time in 2008.

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | September 21, 2007 10:49 PM

The Long War

Continued hawkishness is actually probably the safe bet for the Republicans, and probably has little to do directly with fealty to this lame duck President.

Maybe it will cost them seats in 2008. Probably the only way it wouldn't, would be if there's another terrorist attack before then that restores the reputation of hawkishness by scaring the bejeesus out of the electorate. No, you don't have to imagine that they will stage such, like some latter day Reichstag Fire, or even that they will provoke such by bombing Iran. Al Qaeda would almost certainly want to help them out by staging an attack for them, because untrammeled US hawkishness is the gift that keeps on giving for them, and no one does untrammeled hawkishness like your Republican bull moose in full rut.

But let's assume that there aren't any such dramatic events between now and November 2008, and hawkishness continues to be an electoral drag. So they lose the WH and both legislative houses by larger margins than at present. But this means that Democrats will finally have no excuses left for not drawing down in Iraq, and some movement in the dovish direction is inevitable. From that point on, anything that goes wrong, from the utterly predictable likelihood that Iraq will fail to improve, to the possibility of more terrorist attacks, will be the fault of Demcoratic appeasement, and their not letting our side win, and their "losing Iraq". They're betting that their side's superior noise machine will let them start winning politically again, once a season of Democratic ownership of the intractable problems they have created with their war gives that noise machine something to work with. And there's no narrative like a good Dolchstoss for the right-wing noise machine.

Maybe they could hold down their losses in 2008 somewhat by becoming more moderate and less hawkish. But that would allow the Dems to end the war in Iraq under the cover of ending the war being the centrist, bipartisan position. They would have to pay for the short-term preservation of a few seats with the permanent disabling of the ability to attack the Dems for having "lost Iraq". They need to keep Iraq going after 2008 to keep having failure there as a club with which to beat Democrats.

Posted by Glen Tomkins | September 21, 2007 11:26 PM