Confronting the worst poll numbers seen in the West Wing since his father went down to defeat, President Bush and his team are focusing on the fall midterm elections as the best chance to salvage his presidency and are building a campaign strategy around tax cuts, immigration and national security.
Modern history offers no precedent of a president climbing from a hole as deep as the one Bush finds himself in, and White House strategists have concluded that no staff shake-up or other quick fix will alter their trajectory. In the sixth year of his tenure, they said, Bush cannot easily change the minds of voters whose impressions are fully formed.
And so short of some event outside their direct control -- such as a dramatic turnaround in Iraq or the capture of Osama bin Laden -- Bush advisers have turned to the election as the most important chance to rewrite the troubled narrative of his presidency and allow him to recover enough to govern his last two years, Republican strategists said. With that in mind, Bush last week called on the National Guard to help stop illegal immigrants, signed tax-cut legislation and headlined three party fundraisers.
So the White House is in full campaign mode, creating a bunch of nonsensical "feel good" policies in which they hope will maintain control of Congress in the Republican's hands. And yes, we have seen some of these policies in action--the tax cut to the rich, the Oval Office speech where Bush is sending 6,000 armed National Guard troops to the Mexican border, and the latest flap regarding a constitutional amendment making English as the national language. The Republicans under Karl Rove will also be gearing up for a rather nasty negative campaign season, telling their Republican voters that a vote for the Democrats will be a vote for impeachment of Bush.
Looking at this story, you're probably thinking, "Wow--this doesn't look good for the president. This is not a rosy picture story. This is a story of doom and gloom in the White House." But in this White House PR-manufactured-spin mode, it is bad news before the good news, and we hope that the voters will forget the bad news while we constantly spin the good news. Continuing with the Post story:
If Republicans retain Congress in November, Bush advisers note, he could assert that for the third straight election, the party defied historical patterns and popular predictions. Bush, they said, could advance a fresh agenda in early 2007.
Aides point to the president's last spike in the polls, which came late last year after Iraqi elections and a series of Iraq speeches by Bush. A top adviser said Rove and White House political director Sara M. Taylor are advising candidates not to duck the issue of Iraq but rather to make it a centerpiece of their campaigns.
The Rove-Taylor view is that one-third of Americans agree with liberal Democrats calling for immediate withdrawal and another third support staying the course. The middle third wants a new strategy, but would be leery of pulling out and leaving behind a volatile Iraq, a position strategists believe leaves those voters open to persuasion.
"Look, we're in a sour time -- I readily admit it," Rove said in a speech last week. "I mean, being in the middle of a war where people turn on their television sets and see brave men and women dying is not something that makes people happy and optimistic and upbeat." But, he added, "ultimately, the American people are a center-right country who, presented with a center-right party with center-right candidates, will vote center-right."
Perhaps the most important element of the emerging strategy will be to "move from a referendum to a choice," as Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman put it. Instead of a verdict on Bush, Republicans want to frame the election as a contest with Democrats, confident that voters unhappy with the president will find the opposition even more distasteful.
"We're moving from a period where the public looks at things and says thumbs-up or thumbs-down, to a time when they have a choice between one side or the other," Mehlman said.
So thumbs in the middle is actually good news? Who thought this campaign strategy up--Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli? What's next? Are Republican candidates going to have to "jump the sharks," instead of jumping through hoops?
I especially love Rove's comments on America being a center-right country. Give the American voters a center-right candidate, and they will vote center-right. There is just one problem--George Bush has not governed as a center-right candidate, but rather by the extreme right. He has completely polarized this electorate, and has divided this country along extreme political fault lines. He has refused to compromise, or work with the Democrats in a bipartisan manner--unless you consider President Bush's view of bipartisanship as being nothing more than a rubber-stamp to whatever he says or does. He has continually placated himself towards the Religious Right on both the social issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, and through the selection of extremely hard-lined conservative judges to the courts. But this White House charade is pretty much over. The American public has woken up to realize what type of president George Bush really is--you can see this in the 70 percent of Americans polled saying this country is on the wrong track. President Bush is now losing his support among conservatives and Republicans:
The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll last week found 33 percent of Americans approving of Bush's job performance, his worst showing ever in that poll and matching his father's lowest point. Support among Republicans has fallen to 68 percent, down from 93 percent after the president's reelection.
But how are the Republicans responding to this? Let's take a trip into Candyland:
Even under optimistic scenarios, aides believe that Bush's ratings may never rise above the mid-forties, and privately are mulling contingencies if Democrats win the House. Whenever the White House thinks it is turning a corner, it runs into trouble, such as a 10-day period in February when Cheney shot a friend in a hunting accident, Republicans rebelled against Arab management of U.S. ports and militants blew up a Shiite shrine in Iraq.
"The president's run into a perfect political storm where the confluence of natural disasters from last fall, gasoline prices, staff changes, the continuing war in Iraq, all are giving conservatives a defensive fatigue," said Kenneth Khachigian, a California GOP strategist who served in Ronald Reagan's White House. "And let's put immigration in there, too. . . . There's just wave after wave washing over them at this point."
Still, he said, Republicans will come back to Bush when the contest heats up this fall. "The president still needs to find ways to motivate the troops, and that means using the powers of his office to find victories here and there," Khachigian said. "If I were sitting in their shoes, I'd be looking at probably some high-profile challenges with Congress, whether it's a veto of a spending bill or a battle over judgeships."
Ed Rogers, a prominent Republican strategist, offered similar advice. "We need less panic among Republicans in town and on the Hill and to some degree in the states, and more energy from the White House," he said. "Use the Rose Garden, sign some executive orders. Activity is our friend." But time may not be, some Republicans say. "Opinions do begin to set in . . . so we need successes now," said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.).
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) offered a novel model for recovery: Bill Clinton. In 1995, after Gingrich's Republicans took over Congress, the White House rebuilt public support methodically. "He split with the left, he moved to the center, he did dozens of little things that worked, and gradually, week by week, he grew more acceptable," Gingrich said.
"You get to the point where you have to take a very deep breath and rethink what you're doing," he said of Bush. "He's still president, and he's got 2 1/2 years left. It's very important not just to him but to the country" that he recover authority.
So it is not the Bush White House's fault--they just ran into some unforeseen troubles here. Don't panic. The sky is not falling. Ramp up the White House spin-machine and create some make-do activities showing the president is on the job governorning. See that these make-do activities of the president governorning get prime Fox News coverage, with the Right Wing Echo Machine reiterating how this president is turning things around.
There's nothing like some good spin here.
If there is one thing you have to admire the Republicans, it is their ability to goose-step in unison. If the Republican Party is so willing to march in such a fashion, what else are they willing to do? How much voter fraud, suppression of votes, or even illegal stuffing of ballot boxes (via Diebold) are the Republicans willing to go in order to maintain control of all three branches of government? The Republicans know the stakes of this election. For the Democrats to take control of Congress, the Republicans know that five years worth of Bush White House and Republican scandals, incompetence, and cronyism will be exposed to the American public. A Democratically-controlled Congress would grind the federal government down to a halt for the last two years of this Bush administration, as both political parties would fight over the ensuing congressional investigations. I can't even say what the revelations of these scandals could do to this Republican Party--a party built on a fragile coalition of extreme corporatism and religious fanaticism, using fear, hatred, and racism within social issues to keep their grip on governmental power. Will the American public become so disgusted at these Republican excesses, that they will force the Republicans to play a minority party status in government in 2008? Or will the Republicans find a way to keep their power?
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