It seems to me that if President Bush starts a third war, this time with Iran, or if he goes through with what will be a disastrous surge in Iraq troops (i.e., escalation of the war), and especially if he does both, it may destroy the electability of the Republican Party for the foreseeable future.
It’s historic, what seems likely to happen: Bush will have made himself into the Foreign Policy Hoover of the Republican Party. . . .
For most Americans, Hoover’s laissez-faire policy reaction to the Great Depression welded the Republican Party to a decades-long image of incompetence and untrustworthiness in handling the U.S. economy. This made it impossible to elect a Republican President unless or until he could assure voters he was not Hoover, in other words that he would be a Democrat on domestic economic policy. The spell lasted for 48 years, until Reagan!
Similarly, Bush may create for the Republican Party a decades-long image as warmongering, incompetent and untrustworthy handling foreign policy and the U.S. military. For the next several Presidential elections, the only Republicans electable will be ones who can assure voters they are not Bush, in other words that they are mainstream foreign and war policy thinkers rather than neo-conservatives.
This theorizing was brought on in part by the good news that most of the Democratic Party leadership has finally made a stand against neoconservativism by saying "NO SURGE." Five-plus years of "me-too-ism" has come to an end (whatever Democratic politicians thought they were trying to convey). The new message, strong and clear -- "We are not Bush, we are not the neoconservative warmongering party" -- is going to pay huge dividends for the Democratic Party in both the near and far future! (It was especially heartening to see Harry Reid turned in the right direction on the 'surge' issue).
Nonetheless, I’m not completely sure how I feel about this. Certainly the last six years have been and next two years will probably be a senseless killing field for the Middle East and for our own soldiers, and so the end of the reign of neoconservatives is something any sane, humane person looks forward to. On the other hand, though, the permanent return of neoliberals and a Clintonian foreign policy would not exactly be kind or fair to the world’s poor and ‘outsourced.’
Anyway, and for most of you Democratic Party stalwarts, just a little big picture theorizing to put a smile into your day.