The Tancredo comment that Bush "won't be allowed to darken the door" of the White House after his departure should be enough of a clue as to how the Republican Party is feeling about their Dear Leader. Last night's debate was full of bobbin' and weavin' as the men who would be Republi-king sweated to mouth fulsome praise for policies in the abstract, while handing out some slaps on the specifics. It you listened closely, you even heard some complaints about Bush's handling of Katrina and the war. Moments of near reality in the midst of a Republican debate (before we got back to hatred of gays, English as the official language, and strict creationist world view). With the latest polls showing that a bare majority of Republicans still cling to a favorable view of the president -- and even then on only the most general of questions -- there's little doubt that Republican candidates want to distance themselves from Bush. That's increasingly true even when they're singing to the choir.
After all, reasonable Republicans long ago turned up their nose at the ongoing administration outrages (that growing percentage of independents didn't come from nowhere), and -- just as with apologists for fallen communist regimes -- the reddest of the red have convinced themselves that this administration was "never really conservative anyway." There really is no upside in being BFF with Bush.
So with the "new" bipartisan plan for Iraq that emerged yesterday, sharing the signatures of Lamar! Alexander and Joementum's pal Ken Salazar, it's worth wondering if there's anything more to this than a PR effort. The core of the proposed legislation is support for the conclusions of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report (the ones that, as Kagro X mentioned, everyone was so sure Bush would support, until he didn't, and then they pretended they never heard of it).
Alexander and Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., introduced legislation that would make most of the study group's 79 recommendations official U.S. policy. At least six other senators, including three Republicans, signed on as co-sponsors.
An identical bill was introduced in the House as a bipartisan effort by Republicans and some Democrats including Mark Udall, whose previous votes on Iraq have been disappointing.
It's not clear yet whether this represents a serious effort to bring the troops out of Iraq by 2008 -- which was part of the study group proposal. From the way Lamar! and other Republicans talked about the plan yesterday, it seems the goal is nearly as nebulous and open-ended as Bush's commitment to think about sometime, eventually, setting a "wouldn't it be nice?" goal on climate change. Maybe. They want to change the "official policy" without setting any requirement for real change on the ground.
Most likely, the bill is specifically designed to go nowhere, and to provide cover to those who need to tsk tsk come next election day. Or it may be designed as a stall tactic, there to soak up oxygen and keep more rigorous plans from taking off between now and Magic September.
But Republicans can read the calendar (and polls) as well as Democrats, and there have already been plenty of signs of cracks in the dam. Maybe we'll get lucky, and a wave of self-preservation will compel a few people to do the right thing. If people will actually vote to require troops to come out of Iraq, that'll be a win for the nation -- no matter how they've voted in the past, or what letter follows their name.