That sound you hear might be the loosening collars of Republican presidential candidates. From Rudy Giuliani to Pretty Boy Mitt and Fred Thompson, Republican candidates have worn the Bush legacy like it was a sadistic dog collar. GOP presidential aspirants would get zapped by the general public whenever they supported the president and zapped again by loyal Republican voters whenever they strayed from the Bush line. Who can blame Mitt Romney for focusing on his hair or Fred Thompson for working overtime on his manly bearing? They were the only things Republicans weren't being punished for.
But Bush's approval rating sank to 29% approval rating in the latest WSJ/NBC poll and his support among Republicans sank from 75% to 62%. If that finding holds up as the polls average out (the current RCP average for Bush is 32%), Republican candidates will get a little more breathing room.
Why?
As long as Bush has the overwhelming support of Republican voters, Republican candidates either have to defend Bush positions or avoid answering questions about a lot of issues. GOP voters and the right-wing media apparatus have defended Bush ferociously through the Iraq, Abu Ghraib, warrantless wiretapping, Katrina, the DeLay/Abramoff scandals, Scooter Libby, intelligent design, Terry Schiavo, and politicizing the Justice Department. As a result, there has been very little wiggle room for GOP candidates to pick and choose which parts of the Bush legacy they wanted to adapt for themselves. John McCain has talked about how badly the war was mismanaged before the surge and Romney did a little "me-too" on that point, but Republican candidates are often reduced to figuring out clever ways to pledge fealty to Bush's record even though they avoid mentioning Bush's name.
With Bush's support declining among Republicans because of immigration, Republican candidates might be a little more free to set their own agendas. In a way, this is what Newt Gingrich is trying to do in the drawn out "pre-candidacy" phase of his candidacy. Newt wants Republican candidates for all offices to reject the Bush legacy in the same way that Nikolas Sarkozy rejected the legacy of President Chirac even though they were from the same Gaullist Party. Other candidates might not want to accept Newt's agenda of further hyping the war on terror, adopting Engish as the official language, and privatizing social security and everything else, but Newt has freed himself to define his own agenda rather than defending Bush administration incompetence and malfeasance. But now that the polls might be giving them a little more breathing room, Republican candidates can do more to define themselves.
In a sense then, Bush's most recent decline in the polls might be at least marginally negative for Democrats because it tends to free Republican candidates from the Bush legacy.
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3 comments:
The more I read you, the more I am convinced that you don't quite get it. We are dealing with something other than just an extreme conservative swing of the political pendulum. We are in paranormal times, contending with a radical (as in roots) malignant cancer attached to our republic. It is imperative that this be exorcised before it reaches its inevitable metastatic stage. We have to answer to our children and grand children.
Thanks for visiting again. I want to say that I'm very impressed with your blog. It's really an attractive format and I envy your technical skills.
The point about the dangers of the American right is something that I do "get" and I'm also worried about my kids in relation to the power of the American right. I address the right-wing threat from two angles. First, I try to be quick in responding to manifestations of conservative longing for a right-wing putsch and have done so in my posting on Newt Gingrich, Harvey Mansfield, and Thomas Sowell. I'm worried enough about Gingrich that I've started reading his weekly newsletter.
Not a pleasant experience.
The other thing I do is write a lot about how the right-wing is positioned at this political moment. What is the right-wing thinking, what are their motivations (posts on Coulter's racism and weenie-boy masculinity for example), and how the right is positioned in relation to the coming election. Right now, I'm interested in how the right is positioned in relation to President Bush and the idea that Republican presidential candidates and the right are now getting some breathing space.
I realize that I'm don't always expressing myself with the moral urgency that I feel in relation to the right-wing. In that sense, you're correct in sensing that my writing doesn't always embody an understanding of the problem. But I very much agree that the right-wing is a cancer on American society.
Ric, I find this comment totally reassuring and I am convinced I should spend more time in your pages before going off half-cocked again. Thanks for the reply. And thanks for the compliments.
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