How do Democrats frame the Bush Administration's many failures so Democrats can persuade voters that they would do a better job?
I've been wondering what the common theme is that explains the Bush Administration's failures in Iraq, foreign policy in general, Katrina, and so on. In particular I've been searching for a theme that sticks to the entire Republican party not just a few members of the current Administration so we can persuade voters to support Democrats or they'll get more failures in the future. Attacking Republicans for incompetence without a convincing underlying explanation is too easy for them to side step by blaming a few individuals (FEMA's Brown, Rumsfeld, even Bush in a couple of years when he's conveniently gone).
It finally hit me that the larger theme or frame explaining the radical Republicans' phenomenal incompetence in many areas of running the government is their rigid attachment to their extreme ideological view of the economy, world and society. They are so completely stuck in their deluded, ideological views that contrary facts and even total failure can not sway their beliefs. Reality takes a second place to belief. This not only explains how an apparently competent bunch (former senior business execs, certainly competent political operators) could screw things up so badly. More importantly, it also says to voters that this won't change when the names of the current Republican leaders change, so long as the Republicans have the same radical wacked-out faction running things. They are so out of step with reality, see the world from such a distorted perspective that they are incapable of pragmatically facing reality, fixing what doesn't work, responding to alternative views.
This explains for example why George Bush has never fired anyone for incompetence, just for ideological or political impurity. There is a long list of loyal Republicans who have been fired for not completely following the party line, for accidentally telling the truth about the economy or the cost of the war or the number of troops really needed there.
It also explains why the Republicans have made such an unbelievable botch out of the occupation of Iraq. Putting aside for the moment the dishonest way they fooled the country into supporting them going to war, and their grandiose ideas about the invasion transforming the Middle East for the better, you'd at least have expected them to be much more effective at the occupation than they have been. There was a lot of experience to draw on for planning how to handle the difficult issues of occupying a Moslem country that had no familiarity with democratic methods. So how did the Republicans blunder so badly at the actual implementation of the occupation?
When you read the histories that are starting to come out, you discover that planning for the invasion and occupation was very closely held at the highest levels of the Administration, among the top political appointees only. All the experts in the military, intelligence and foreign policy communities were ignored. (The book "Assassin's Gate" for example has devastating examples of this.) The neocons were so confident of their brilliant understanding of the world that other points of view, not just other opinions but other experience was ignored.
When you put the Radical Republicans in this light, as inflexible ideologues, it becomes clear that this won't get better by changing a few leaders. It's the whole party that has to change. Attacking Republicans as a group for the failures of the current administration is a hard case to make, but attacking them for their rigid ideological philosophy which inevitably causes this incompetence will stick.