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Don’t Call It A Comeback

Harry Reid on the Iraq war, and Nancy Pelosi going over to Damascus, Syria…This is a formula for a massive Republican comeback, especially at the presidential level, in ’08. ~James Pinkerton Mr. Pinkerton’s commentary is usually very smart and on target, which is why I found this remark so bizarre.  It is true that people […]

Harry Reid on the Iraq war, and Nancy Pelosi going over to Damascus, Syria…This is a formula for a massive Republican comeback, especially at the presidential level, in ’08. ~James Pinkerton

Mr. Pinkerton’s commentary is usually very smart and on target, which is why I found this remark so bizarre.  It is true that people viscerally opposed to the Democrats regard Reid and Pelosi’s efforts with special disgust, but I don’t think anyone has seen the evidence that the public at large actually objects to the Democratic leadership trying to rejigger foreign policy.  They may object to meaningless grandstanding that changes nothing, but that would mean that the public wants real opposition to Mr. Bush and his war, rather than the opposition of cheap talk and self-important photo-ops and glossy magazine features (Chuck Hagel, this means you). 

Generic ballot numbers, Mr. Bush’s approval rating and the relative rarity of three consecutive terms won by the same party in the post-war period (since 1952, it has happened exactly once) all suggest that the GOP could not win in ’08, especially at the presidential level, even if the the genes governing the most impressive traits of Lincoln, T.R., Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan were all spliced together to combine some sort of GOP Serpentor and this being were made the GOP nominee.  As it is, given the pathetic state of the major candidate presidential field, they would be lucky to have a leader as effective as Cobra Commander (we could call him GOPra Commander).  To offset this tremendous weakness (made all the worse by the cluelessness of the GOP on popular attitudes about trade and economic policy), Pelosi would have to try to sell the Syrians large parts of Florida in exchange for a lifetime supply of baba ghanooj to make the GOP reasonably competitive in ’08.

Update: The March Hotline/Diageo numbers are available, and it has some interesting information for those fearing the great anti-Pelosi backlash.  Questions 15 and 16 are instructive.  Asked whether they are “happy” that the Dems won control of Congress, 55% said that they were.  Asked whether they thought Congress spent too much, too little or about the right amount of time checking the executive, 24% said “too little” and 32% said “about the right amount,” while only 33% thought Congress spent too much time on it.  If the Dems can sell what they are doing as imposing checks and balances on a runaway executive, they will win the crowd. 

Question 18 shows the generic ballot gap: the Dems lead by 18 with 15% of Republicans that either didn’t know or refused to give an answer, 6% choosing neither and 9% of Republicans backing the Democratic candidate.  That’s nearly one-third of the party.  By comparison, the Dems had 6/3/4% giving comparable responses.  The Democrats are far more unified behind their eventual nominee, regardless of who it is, than the Republicans, and almost the whole advantage they have in the generic poll would seem to come from this discrepancy in partisan loyalty.  Only 7 in 10 Republicans say they will back their party’s candidate, but the Democratic candidate gets 87% of Democrats behind him.

For the last 28 years, we have been operating in a world in which, according to the popular stereotype, strong executive = competent foreign policy = Republican and weak executive = bungling foreign policy = Democrat.  (The standard GOP/neocon knock on Clinton in foreign policy was that he was too weak, ineffectual and feckless, not that he was a rabid interventionist and authoritarian, and in virtually every case where he played these latter roles the neocons supported and defended his decisions.)  I believe that post-1979 world is ending, mostly thanks to a Republican combining executive usurpation and foreign policy bungling on a massive scale.  We have nothing to which we can compare this new world, because nothing quite like it has existed before.  Therefore, congressional challenges to a would-be strong executive and congressional challenges to that executive’s bungled foreign policy may no longer elicit the traditional response of the public rallying around the President.  Perhaps the old structure will reassert itself in the future, but it seems possible that an entire new generation of voters will naturally and appropriately associate executive power-grabs, warmongering and failure and tie it to their image of the GOP, which means that expectations of public outrage at Reid and Pelosi’s foreign policy adventures are based on political realities that no longer exist.  On the contrary, these moves may or may not be good policy, but they are likely to prove to be very good politics.  It seems to me that Boomers are still trapped in that old world and keep expecting the public responses that would occur during the post-Carter years.  They may find that things are no longer what they once were.

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