09.12.2006
How Bush Rules: Bush's Radicalism is Leading to a GOP Crackup
Sidney Blumenthal
The inescapable signs of disillusionment surrounding the Bush
administration in its sixth year, facing a second mid-term election,
suggest far more than the usual syndrome of incumbent weariness. These
are the rumblings of a regime crisis.
President Bush's whole party bears the burden of his accumulated
self-generated difficulties not only because of their overwhelming
scale but also because the Republicans have sustained disciplined
one-party rule in which congressional oversight has been largely
suppressed.
The congressional Republicans' feeble assertion of institutional
authority has made changing the Congress the only way to revive it and
check and balance Bush's radical presidency during his remaining two
years.
Bush's radicalism dominates policy and politics, as I document in my
book new How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime.
His all-encompassing "war on terror," conflating the disparate al
Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Iraqi insurgency as "a single
movement," is also reflected in his dismissal of diplomatic and
political solutions, urgently advocated by U.S. military commanders in
Iraq for years, and Vice President ***** Cheney's sneering denigration
of "law enforcement" in favor of the militarization of policy.
Bush's belief in an unfettered imperial presidency is apparent in his
doctrine of the "unitary executive," his executive order asserting that
the commander in chief under wartime can impose his will by fiat, and
more than 750 signing statements stipulating that he will enforce
enacted laws as he chooses. Bush's radicalism can also be seen in his
advocacy of unwarranted domestic surveillance, "alternative"
interrogation techniques applied to detainees unbound by the Geneva
Conventions against torture ("the dark side," as Vice President Cheney
has approvingly called it), and granting Cheney power equal to the
president's to control the classification of intelligence.
While Cheney is the true author of Bush's radical presidency as the
fulfillment of Richard Nixon's ambition thwarted by Watergate, Steven
Bradbury, acting deputy attorney general, has most succinctly stated
the droit du seigneur Bush doctrine: "The president is always right."
Bush is the only president, ever, who has been hostile to science. His
antagonism is reflected in his restrictions on stem cell research that
might lead to cures of many diseases--an issue now at the center of
political campaigns from Missouri to California; his rules forbidding
groups that receive federal funding from mentioning the words "condom"
and "reproductive health" on their websites; his censoring of
government scientists on global warming and climate change; and his
urging that so-called "Intelligent Design" as an alternative theory to
evolution be taught in public schools, despite a federal court's ruling
against it.
Bush's radical political strategy depends upon the radicalism of his
policies. It cannot be captiously described as mere spin. Bush and his
chief political operative Karl Rove's strategy of extreme polarization
in order to achieve maximum turnout of the conservative base requires
constant agitation around the most abrasive social issues, but above
all war without end. But even gay marriage, abortion, and guns would
have proved insufficient without politicization of a projected
perpetual war in which the opposition is depicted as "appeasers,"
"pre-9/11," and "Defeatocrats."
In Bush's second term, Rove's deliberately divisive approach failed at
achieving a national political realignment, but it has succeeded in
restructuring the Republican Party. Rove's imperative of unifying the
right-wing base leaves the party in pieces. Bush's earlier political
successes have laid the groundwork for possibly profound losses in the
future. The religious right has moved to the center of the party, the
moderate remnant pushed to the fringes. A potential wipeout of moderate
Republicans in the Northeast and Midwest in 2006 and 2008 will make the
potential of Republican Party emerging as a moderate force that much
more improbable in the future.
The effects of Bush's radicalism since 2004 have dramatically driven
Republican Party identification down to 32 percent from 37 percent in
October 2004, and now trailing Democratic identification by almost 6
points. Nearly everywhere, Republican candidates are not campaigning as
Republicans but as supra-party local figures. When Bush arrives,
candidates flee from the photo opportunity. By August, Bush had a
greater approval than disapproval rating in only three small western
states: Idaho, Oklahoma and Wyoming. Even in Alabama, Mississippi and
Texas, more than 50 percent consider his performance unfavorably. Bush
has the most sustained unpopularity of any president since Herbert
Hoover.
Some Republicans have begun to express anxious recognition of their
party's fundamental transformation. "I think we've lost our way,"
Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said. In California, Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger, who has reversed his falling fortunes by embracing
Democratic positions across the board, is a party of one. William F.
Buckley, Jr., a founding father of the modern conservative movement,
declared that Bush's radicalism is not conservative at all, but the
"absence of effective conservative ideology." Buckley predicted, "There
will be no legacy for Mr. Bush... So therefore I think his legacy is
indecipherable."
In response to his catastrophic policies, Bush stays the course, and
turns up the heat on ever more inflammatory rhetoric to electrify his
base as its energy runs down. Rather than rethinking his
counterproductive policies, he is redoubling his bets on his polarizing
strategy.
Bush's radical presidency has recast the character of the party, its
purposes and appeal, and Republicans' disorientation in the 2006
mid-term campaign is only the first inkling of coming disintegration.
His radicalism is unique, but the consequences are pervasive and
lasting. In the future, to the extent Republican presidential
candidates adhere to his legacy they will be undermined beyond the
party hardcore; to the extent they reject his legacy they will be
undermined within the hardcore. Bush may contaminate the Republican
Party brand for perhaps a generation to come.
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