Republicans are nervous:
The release of a new CBS News poll showing Bush’s approval rating dropping to 34 percent, a low for him in that survey, sent tremors through Republican circles in Washington. Scott Reed, who managed Robert J. Dole’s presidential campaign in 1996, called the results “pretty shattering.” Most distressing to GOP strategists was that Bush’s support among Republicans fell from 83 percent to 72 percent.
Congress has to face the voters in November and they are increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of running as supporters of the President’s foreign policy and national security agenda. This is setting up an interesting dynamic.
Karl Rove has already intimated that the Republicans intend to run a third straight campaign based on keeping the country safe from terrorism. As more Republicans pull away from the President’s national security and foreign polices, the Republicans are losing the message discipline that is required for their campaign to effective.
The Bush administration and the GOP Congress have a symbiotic relationship. They literally feed off each other. And while the GOP consensus began to crack last year over domestic policies, this is the first time the consensus has fractured over the President’s number one issue.
The breakdown of the Republican consensus on national security both reflects and exacerbates Bush’s political weakness heading toward the midterm elections, according to party strategists. Even as Republicans abandoned him last year on domestic issues such as Social Security, Hurricane Katrina relief and Harriet Miers’s Supreme Court nomination, they had largely stuck by him on terrorism and other security issues.
The less Congress is willing to defend Bush’s performance on terrorism and the war in Iraq, the weaker the President becomes and the less they can collectively claim to be the better party for keeping the country safe.
This creates a no-win situation for the GOP Congress. If they stand by the President they must give up their own prerogatives and oversight responsibilities and continue to participate in a series of cover-ups. They must look the other way on illegal surveillance and continue to accept a piddling role in forming an exit strategy for Iraq.
“The repetition of the news coming out of Iraq is wearing folks down,” Reed said. “It started with women and it’s spreading. It’s just bad news after bad news after bad news, without any light at the end of the tunnel.”
Yet, if the Republicans distance themselves from the President and reassert their responsibilities and powers, and offer a Murtha Plan of their own, they will open a Pandora’s Box that will eviscerate the President’s credibility on national security and could fatally cripple the Presidency of George W. Bush.
Moreover, the backlash will come directly on the Republican members of Congress.
That is why we are now seeing things like this:
The first heading on the issues page of Rep. Mark Foley’s Web site brags that he is “one of President Bush’s strongest supporters in Congress.” The Florida Republican voted for the president’s legislation 90 percent of the time, according to the Web site, “the 3rd highest ranking among the Florida delegation.”
…”We simply want to participate and aren’t going to be PR flacks when they need us,” Foley said. “We all have roles. We have oversight. When you can’t answer your constituents when they have legitimate questions . . . we can’t simply do it on trust.”
But as much as Foley would like to fight back and exert some independence, he has no safe outlet for doing so. The Republicans are caught in a trap of their own making. They need and intend to run on their party’s strength on national security, but they also need to repudiate their party’s performance on national security. They need the President to appear strong, but he is at 34% in the polls.
I am glad I am not a Republican consultant. I’d tell them to impeach the whole lot of them before summer and run on saving the nation from disaster.
