How Bush helped the GOP commit suicide
A new study shows that unless the Democrats self-destruct, they could walk into the White House in '08 -- and might hold it for years.
By Gary Kamiya
Read more: Republican Party, George W. Bush, Democratic Party, Iraq, Gary Kamiya, Opinion, 2008 election
March 27, 2007 | Democrats should give two cheers for George W. Bush. He and his political mastermind, Karl Rove, dreamed of achieving a permanent Republican majority. Instead, his disastrous presidency has dealt a devastating blow to the GOP, one from which it may not recover for many years.
That's the inescapable import of a major study of American voters' values and attitudes by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, released March 22. The study finds that voters have turned dramatically away from the GOP since Bush took office. Iraq, of course, is the single biggest reason for this. (A separate Pew poll, released on March 26, shows that 59 percent of Americans want their congressional representatives to support a bill calling for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq by August 2008, with only 33 percent opposed.) But even more troubling for Republican strategists is the fact that underlying attitudes and beliefs are trending against them. The study's implication is that the GOP, especially in its current far-right incarnation, was facing serious structural, long-term problems anyway, and that Bush delivered the coup de grâce.
To Democrats and left-leaning independents who were preparing to either commit suicide or move to Provence after the 2004 elections: Put down the gun and back away from the baguette. America may not be the Bush League, after all.
I asked Andrew Kohut, the Pew Center's director, if there was a single ray of hope for the GOP for 2008 in his group's report. He pointed out that if the poll showed Americans turning away from the GOP, they weren't very enthusiastic about the Democrats, either. In fact, he noted that "the favorable ratings for the Democratic Party really haven't improved that much since 1994." And he added that voters in presidential elections are heavily influenced by the qualities of individual candidates, not just party affiliation.
But aside from those rather feeble caveats, Kohut said the writing was on the wall for the GOP. "With the kind of discontent there is with this administration and national conditions, unless things change dramatically there's going to be a vote for change, not for continuity," Kohut said.
Particularly worrying for the GOP are the trend lines among independents, a swing group Republicans desperately need to hold. "The independents seem to be coming closer to the Democrats these days," Kohut said.
The most explosive statistic in the survey shows a mass exodus from the GOP -- a defection that can only be blamed on Bush and the Iraq war. In 2002, the number of people who identified as Republicans or Republican-leaning was the same as those who identified as Democrats or Democratic-leaning: 43 percent. But today, 50 percent of the public identify as Democrats or leaning that way, while only 35 percent identify as Republicans or Republican-leaning. In other words, in just five years Democrats have gone from being tied with the Republicans to holding a 15 percent lead.
In historic terms, Kohut said this shift is quite large. He cautioned, "It's mostly the independents, and the independents can swing back the other way." But then he added, "But there are no indications in the short run that they will."
Considering that Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 and Bush barely won in 2004, a shift of this size has vast ramifications. It's true that gerrymandering and the vagaries of the Electoral College give the Republicans a built-in head start. It also remains to be seen whether the Democratic political machine is capable of challenging the GOP juggernaut. And unexpected real-world events could intervene. Nonetheless, the Pew poll strongly suggests that unless the Democrats completely self-destruct, they should be the odds-on favorites to win the presidency in 2008 -- and perhaps for years after.
Which could lead to a fascinating intra-party debate about whether the Democrats should play it safe by nominating the candidate with the most centrist appeal (presumably Hillary Clinton, although that is sure to be contested) or capitalize on having a rare head start in the polls by going with a glamorous but risky newcomer like Barack Obama.
But the significance of the Pew study, the latest in a series that started in 1987, goes beyond Bush or the upcoming election. On virtually every issue, it shows that the public holds views that are closer to those of the Democrats than the Republicans -- and that long-term trends are moving in that direction, too. For the GOP, its move-to-the-right strategy paid short-term dividends, but that ploy is now looking like a case of live by the sword, die by the sword. Its greatest challenge is now to find a way to recapture the political center without alienating the right-wing base to which it has so effectively pandered. For it looks like hard-right positions aren't playing in Peoria anymore.
Take public support for government programs, a key index of difference between the parties. Sixty-nine percent of Americans believe that "government should care for those who can't care for themselves" -- up 12 percent from 1994, the year of Newt Gingrich's anti-government "Contract With America."
Another remarkable finding concerned social conservatism -- the issue that inspired so much hand-wringing after the 2004 elections, with many pundits opining that most Democrats were simply too liberal and secular-minded on "values" issues to win. This was always overblown -- and, in fact, this and earlier Pew surveys have consistently found that Americans have been growing less conservative on social values issues over the last 20 years.
