Bush As The Embarrassing Uncle The Republicans Wish Would Go Away

That President Bush is a damaging figurehead for any wannabe Republican presidential candidate is a repeating theme of American mainstream media commentary, though it was originally raised in the blogstream two years ago. This theme is important because it underlies the most prominent failings of the Bush presidency, and the singular mission of chief adviser, Karl Rove - to recreate American politics so that conservatives, and the hard right, rule for decades to come, remaking America, and the larger world, in their own image, and converting the masses to their own belief system.

Gary Younge, writing at Comment Is Free, has more on this :

Bush's problem is not that he has failed on our terms - humanism, equality, peace and democracy - but that he has failed on his own.

...the Bush agenda was always more far-reaching than anything that can be accounted for by mere polls, war, or the loss of human life. The ultimate aim of his presidency was to realign American politics to cement a conservative electoral majority for a generation. The cornerstone of his domestic agenda was to build on the Republicans' traditional base of evangelists, southerners, white men and the wealthy, by winning over Catholics, married white women and a sizable minority of Latinos with a mixture of policies and pronouncements on immigration, homophobia, abortion and social security.

Bush did not create the partisan split in America; he inherited it, just as Al Gore would have if he had won the supreme court case in 2000. But while the split was broad (the difference was less than 5% in 13 states from New Mexico to New Hampshire), it was Bush who made it deep and rancorous.

For unlike Thatcher or Reagan he sought to achieve his ends not by exploiting division in order to forge a new, more rightwing consensus but rather to exploit new divisions in order to crush a growing consensus. The majority of the country was, for example, pro-choice and in favour of granting equal rights to gay couples in almost all areas. So the Bush administration chose to leverage gay marriage and late-term abortion - two issues that could act as a wedge - to rally his base. Crude in execution and majoritarian in impulse, it sought not to win over new converts but simply to mobilise dormant constituencies. His legacy will be rightwing policies - but not a more rightwing political culture.

That his agenda should have failed so completely should come as no surprise. The project was always, at root, a faith-based initiative. Following the Republican congressional victory in 2002 Rove was asked to comment on the fact that the nation seemed evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. "Something else is going on out there," he said. "Something else more fundamental ... But we will only know it retrospectively. In two years, or four years or six years, [we may] look back and say the dam began to break in 2002."

With no discernible material basis on which to build, this new majority at home and new world order abroad had to be fashioned from whole cloth. A Bush aide once ridiculed a New York Times reporter for belonging to "the reality-based community", which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality". "That's not the way the world really works any more," he said. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

So here we are studying. The coalition crumbled. In 2006 Catholics backed the Democrats; white women broke even. According to a Wall Street Journal poll, Americans would prefer the next president to be a Democrat by 52% to 31%. Meanwhile, the presumptive standard bearer for this new majority is treated like a pariah. As the Republican hopeful Mitt Romney pressed flesh in a restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire, a few weeks ago, Muriel Allard said: "We need someone like him. They don't care about us over there." At a town hall meeting a couple of hours away in Keene, another Republican contender, John McCain, was asked last month if it wasn't time to put a "warrior in chief" in the White House rather than these "draft dodgers". Bush's name never came up. "Friends who were obnoxious in their praise for him just don't mention him any more," says Rick Holmes from Derry. "He's like the embarrassing uncle you just don't want to talk about."

A sense of doom among Republicans is palpable. A growing number of Republican congressmen - most recently the former house speaker Dennis Hastert - have announced they are to retire, or are considering it. "Democrats will win the White House [and] hold their majority in the house and in the Senate in 2008," the retiring congressman Ray Lahood told the New York Times.

There is even talk that Republicans might not invite Bush to their convention. "If they're smart, no," the Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio told Newsweek. "Especially if things don't change in Iraq, we'll have the problem the Democrats had in 1968 with Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam. The question becomes: where do we hide the president?"

They don't have to hide the president. The Republicans can just keep doing what they've been doing through their televised debates so far : pretend he doesn't exist.

Bush Capital Runs Out



After he won the 2004 election, President Bush boasted, credibly, "I have political capital and I intend to spend it."

But what has he spent it on? The Iraq War remains a disaster, sucking up more a billion dollars a day. The US, and NATO, appear to be sinking quickly into the kind of prolonged, demoralising and civilian heavy conflict that helped destroy the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Compassionate conservatism lies rotting in the sun as a political theory, and practicality. His cherished Immigration bill is gone, it being the last grand policy of his presidency. The Bush dream of using democracy to supposedly bring freedom to people crushed by dictatorships, cruel regimes and despots has failed, monumentally, and sadly.

His political capital has all been spent, the US Treasury is growing chillingly bare, and tens of millions of American people are sinking under horrendous levels of personal debt, as they watch the value of their homes, for many their only real asset, blow away like dust on the wind.

It's a shocking state of affairs for the leader of the free world, and even the most optimistic of right wing American columnists and opinion makers see nothing between now and the end of the Bush presidency, that will transform any of these monumental failures back into gold.

Or even capital.

Bush is being steadily, systematically, abandoned by his own party. Bush is the Titanic, but the passengers can see the iceberg, and they're getting off now.

From the New York Times :

After a string of Republican defections this week — on Iraq, immigration and domestic eavesdropping — President Bush enters the final 18 months of his presidency in danger of losing control over a party that once marched in lockstep with him.

First, two prominent Republican senators broke with the president on Iraq. Then, Mr. Bush’s party abandoned him in droves on the immigration bill, sending the measure to its death in the Senate, despite the president’s fervent lobbying for it.

And when Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to issue subpoenas to the White House for documents related to its domestic eavesdropping program, three Republicans, including a longtime loyalist, Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, joined them, and another three did not take a position.

With the nation turning its attention to who will succeed Mr. Bush — and Republican presidential candidates increasingly distancing themselves from him — even allies say it could become increasingly difficult for the president to assert himself over his party, much less force the Democratic majority in Congress to bend to his will.

...for a president who once had almost absolute control over his own party and a proclivity to employ his power expansively if not audaciously, the last week was a reminder of how much things have changed. Republicans who came to office brimming with optimism just a few short years ago now sound as if they fear a long slog ahead.

....Republican support for Mr. Bush (is) dwindling across the party spectrum. Among moderate and liberal Republicans, 52 percent currently approve of Mr. Bush’s job performance, down from 63 percent in April, he said. Among conservatives, his job approval stood at 74 percent this month, down from 86 percent in April.

With 2008 looking like a tough year for Republicans, Mr. Jillson said lawmakers would look back to their districts, rather than to Washington and the White House, for guidance on how to vote. That was abundantly clear on immigration, when even Mr. Bush’s closest Republican allies — including two Texans, Senators John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison — openly opposed him.

“When John Cornyn defects from the president,” Mr. Jillson said, “you know the president’s mojo is completely gone.”

For Republicans who want to want to keep their seats in Congress, and for those who think they've still got a chance at winning the White House in 2008, pulling as far away from Bush as possible is now seen as a good, and solid, strategy.

Nearly all the Republican presidential candidates in recent debates did not not even mention their president. It was as though they feared that even saying the word "Bush" out loud would cast them immediately into a poll dungeon.

Bush is on his way to becoming the invisible president.


The Policies That Now Lie Buried With Bush

Bush Showing All Of His 61 Years, Despite The Bike Rides

Most Americans See Bush-Cheney Regime As Absolute Disaster

Republican Presidential Candidates Put The Boot Into Bush

President Told Not To Darken The Doorstep Of The White House

Verbally kicking ten kinds of shit out of President Bush worked so well for the Democrats during the mid-term elections, last year, that nearly all the current Republican wannabe presidents decided it was their turn to have a go.

During last night's Republican presidential candidate debate, they took turns putting the boot into Bush with venom, and enthusiasm.

Pro-war Republican media flakes used to wail from the rooftops about how progressives and liberals were always trying to "Blame Bush" for the horrors of the Iraq War. Now it's the Republicans unfurling the "Blame Bush" banner, the right wing media has gone quiet. Of course, they're all too busy right now shredding the president over his immigration reforms.

From the Associated Press :

President Bush drew sporadic, startling criticism Tuesday night from Republican White House hopefuls unhappy with his handling of the Iraq war, his diplomatic style and his approach to immigration.

"I would certainly not send him to the United Nations" to represent the United States, said Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor and one-time member of Bush's Cabinet, midway through a spirited campaign debate.

Arizona Sen. John McCain criticized the administration for its handling of the Iraq War, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said, "I think we were underprepared and underplanned for what came after we knocked down Saddam Hussein."

Rep. Duncan Hunter (news, bio, voting record) of California said the current administration "has the slows" when it comes to building a security fence along the border with Mexico.

Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado recalled that White House aide Karl Rove had once told him "never darken the door of the White House." The congressman said he'd tell George W. Bush the same thing.

The criticism of Bush was more in keeping of the type of rhetoric that could be expected when Democratic presidential contenders debate.

Its prominence at the GOP event — while Bush was traveling overseas — was a reflection of his poor poll ratings and the need of even members of his own party to campaign on platforms of change.

Senator John McCain joined in the spate of Bush bashing regarding the Iraq War, despite admitting that he hadn't read the National Intelligence Assessment before casting a vote that helped make the war a reality.

McCain has long criticized Bush for fumbling the aftermath of Saddam's fall, and Romney has recently begun to make some of the same criticisms.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee added his voice to those criticizing the war effort. He added that the Bush administration "lost credibility" with its response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Thompson's answer was the most startling, coming from a man who had once served in the president's Cabinet as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Bush's decision to invade Iraq caused hard feelings with longtime allies in Europe, and elsewhere around the world.

Bush's support for the pending immigration legislation is the source of Tancredo's criticism, and the issue figured prominently in the debate.

Think Progress has highlighted Tom Trancredo's remarks about Bush, which were the more hard-hitting of the debate, and includes a video that shows the audience applauded him loudly for rounding on Bush :

TANCREDO: Some time ago, in 2003 I think it was, that I got a call from Karl Rove, who told me that, because of my criticism of the president, I should never darken the doorstep of the White House.

I have been so disappointed in the president in so many ways since his — actually for the last several years, not just the immigration issue, but several other things, including the No Child Left Behind and the massive increase in government that we call prescription drug — Medicare prescription drug, that I’m afraid I would have to tell the president of the United States — I mean, as president, I would have to tell George Bush exactly the same thing Karl Rove told me.

Bush Hammered Over Iraq By Key Republicans

Get The War Sorted Out Now, You're Destroying the GOP

The Conductor In Chief : Bush tries his hand at guiding a band. And no, he had no idea what he was doing.

It's surreal to see Republican presidential wannabes taking part in hours and hours of televised debate, and yet the current Republican president, George W. Bush, is rarely, if ever mentioned.

In the first the Republican debates, Bush's name was mentioned only once, while former president Ronald Reagan was praised and hailed repeatedly.

It's like President Bush is already gone from the White House. Are Republicans too scared to even mention his name, lest they be associated with him? Or, God forbid, appear to be supporting the president in any way whatsoever?

While his poll numbers are low, only 30% to 33% of Americans still give him the thumbs up (depending on which poll you view), he is not the most unpopular president in American history, and there are signs that as the Republicans descend into ugly squabbling amongst themselves over the future of the Iraq War and the meaning of true conservative values, Bush's numbers might even go up.

But the Iraq War is going to be a near insurmountable problem for Republican candidates in the 2008 presidential elections, and the presidential wannabes know it.

The Iraq War is causing Republican senators endless headaches, on the Hill, and back at home, where some have reported intense confrontations from military families, or just locals in the streets.

Despite the fact that many Democrats voted in favour of the Iraq War (however reluctantly some of those votes may have been cast), it is 'The Republicans War'. They pushed for it, they denied its reality for as long as possible, and so they must own it.

It is a rare day indeed that you see or hear any Democrat talking favourably about the continuation of the war, and most Americans agree with them that the war is militarily lost and that the troops should come home. But the Republicans, in the vast majority, are still true believers that the Iraq War will turn out for the best, or at least less worse than the predictions that detail a Middle East locked in conflict and desperate struggle for generations to come.

The Democrats will find it far easier to talk about the war they so strongly oppose when the real action of the 2008 presidential elections begin. Republicans are now becoming so desperate, so fearful, about how the Iraq War will impact on their chances of retaining the White House through to 2012, many of them are demanding the president either find a solution to lowering the American death toll, and the daily bloodshed unleashed on the Iraqis, or begin withdrawing troops.

Last week, a most remarkable meeting between the president and 11 House Republicans took place in the White House, and the Iraq War was the chief subject under discussion. So important was the meeting viewed to be for future Republican harmony that there was special guests in the room : Defence Secretary Robert Gates, Bush advisor Karl Rove and Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

The fallout from the meeting was mostly contained by the Bush media handlers, but word still got out that Bush was left stunned by some of the things that the Republicans told him, as though no-one had talked to him in such a way before, or at least for a long time.

Some commentators claimed it was the day Bush had his 'bubble' well and truly shattered, meaning that the key staff surrounding the president keep him bubbled away from the bad news, and the realities of vivid and deep dissent amongst his fellow Republicans, in Washington and across the United States.

But the message to Bush was loud and clear, and its volume has not been turned down since the meeting : Fix The War, Or You Will Destroy The Republican Party.

From the Washington Post :

Participants in Tuesday's White House meeting said frustration about the Iraqi government's efforts dominated the conversation, with one pleading with the president to stop the Iraqi parliament from going on vacation while "our sons and daughters spill their blood."

The House members pressed Bush and Gates hard for a "Plan B" if the current troop increase fails to quell the violence and push along political reconciliation. Davis said that administration officials convinced him there are contingency plans, but that the president declined to offer details, saying that if he announced his backup plan, the world would shift its focus to that contingency, leaving the current strategy no time to succeed.

Davis, a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, also presented Bush dismal polling figures to dramatize just how perilous the party's position is, participants said. Davis would not disclose details, saying the exchange was private. Others warned Bush that his personal credibility on the war is all but gone.

From the New York Times :

Moderate Republicans gave President Bush a blunt warning on his Iraq policy at a private White House meeting this week, telling the president that conditions needed to improve markedly by fall or more Republicans would desert him on the war.

The White House session demonstrated the grave unease many Republicans are feeling about the war, even as they continue to stand with the president against Democratic efforts to force a withdrawal of forces through a spending measure that has been a flash point for weeks.

Participants in the Tuesday meeting between Mr. Bush, senior administration officials and 11 members of a moderate bloc of House Republicans said the lawmakers were unusually candid with the president, telling him that public support for the war was crumbling in their swing districts.

One told Mr. Bush that voters back home favored a withdrawal even if it meant the war was judged a loss. Representative Tom Davis told Mr. Bush that the president’s approval rating was at 5 percent in one section of his northern Virginia district.

“It was a tough meeting in terms of people being as frank as they possibly could about their districts and their feelings about where the American people are on the war,” said Representative Ray LaHood of Illinois, who took part in the session, which lasted more than an hour in the residential section of the White House. “It was a no-holds-barred meeting.”

Several of the Republican moderates who visited the White House have already come under political attack at home for their support of Mr. Bush and survived serious Democratic challenges in November.

Representative Charles W. Dent of Pennsylvania, a co-chairman of the Tuesday Group, an alliance of about 30 moderate Republican lawmakers, helped arrange the meeting. He said lawmakers wanted to convey the frustration and impatience with the war they are hearing from voters.

“It was very healthy,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, who attended but let the moderates do most of the talking.

“I walked away from it feeling I got a chance to make my points,” Mr. Davis said.

Mr. Gates, who also attended the White House meeting on Tuesday, told lawmakers that the Pentagon would evaluate the violence in Iraq and the progress of the administration’s troop buildup plan by early September to determine the next phase of the military strategy.

Here's an earlier report from the LA Times earlier report on the Republican dissent that led to the 'White House 11' meeting, and how Bush is now viewed as a liability by many Republicans as they fixate on the 2008 elections.

So much so that key Republicans are said to whispering to each other that they don't have a chance of retaining the White House, and should already be looking forward to taking it back in 2012. 'Blame Bush' may have been an unofficial motto for Democrats in the 2004 elections, but it is quickly being adopted by Republicans, as they try to dump responsibility for the Iraq War, high fuel prices, plunging property values, the falling American dollar and growing malaise across the country right at the door of the Bush White House.

And why not? The rest of the world Blames Bush, so it should not be unusual that desperate Republicans, trying to distance themselves from the president, would do exactly the same :

President Bush's unpopularity and a string of political setbacks have created a toxic climate for the Republican Party, making it harder to raise money and recruit candidates for its drive to retake control of Congress.

Some of the GOP's top choices to run for the House next year have declined, citing what Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) called a "poisonous" environment. And Republicans' fundraising edge, an important advantage over the last five years, has dwindled.

With GOP clout diminished after November's election losses, the Republicans' national committee and their House and Senate campaign committees together raised the same amount as the Democrats in the first quarter of the year — and Democrats ended the period with more cash in the bank. At this point four years ago, Republicans had more than twice the money Democrats did.

"The reality is the Republican brand right now is just not a good brand," said Tim Hibbitts, an independent Oregon pollster. "For Republicans, the only way things really get better … is if somehow, some way, Iraq turns around."

Jennifer Duffy of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report said the party was "desperately in need of some Prozac."

Though Republicans have recruited many solid candidates in their effort to retake Capitol Hill — and they have more than 18 months to improve their fortunes — the environment could get worse.

Damaged by ethics scandals in 2006, the GOP in recent weeks has seen FBI raids at businesses or homes connected to two of its congressmen. A federal agency last week began an investigation into Bush advisor Karl Rove's political operation, and congressional panels authorized a flurry of subpoenas related to White House political activities and the run-up to the Iraq war.

Broader signs of Republican distress also are turning up across the country.

When voters five years ago were asked which party they identified with, neither Democrats nor Republicans held an advantage. Now 50% of voters say they are aligned with the Democrats, and 35% with Republicans, according to a survey released last month by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

And in New Hampshire, nonpartisan pollster Dick Bennett said the atmosphere was so sour that he was having a tough time getting Republicans to participate in surveys. The war, high gas prices and unhappiness with the Bush administration have dampened their interest sharing opinions, he said.

A few years ago, "they would make arguments in favor of the president, and they don't anymore," Bennett said. "They don't defend the president on anything."

The GOP's relatively weak fundraising totals for the first quarter could also complicate the party's reelection effort, wrote Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report in a recent assessment. Though it can be dangerous to read too much into these early signals, she wrote, "a weak bank account doesn't just make a bad headline, it also makes an incumbent more attractive to a potential challenger."

Democrats outnumber Republicans in the House 232 to 201, with two vacancies

In the Senate, the party breakdown is 49-49, but two independents side with the Democrats, giving them control.

Last week brought more potential bad news for Republicans:

An obscure federal agency, the Office of Special Counsel, said it would investigate several matters concerning the GOP, including whether a U.S. attorney was fired for political reasons. The office also intends to look at Bush administration officials' use of Republican National Committee e-mail accounts for government business, and political presentations by White House staff to Cabinet agencies. The office enforces the Hatch Act, which generally bars the use of taxpayer resources for campaign purposes.