Novak: Bush’s Surge Speech Backfired Politically
Robert Novak’s latest weekly report says President George Bush’s speech last week about his new surge/escalation/augmentation policy backfired — and that GOPers on Capital Hill want out of the conflict due to troubling reports from a colleague. He writes:
President Bush’s attempt to sell the new Iraq policy to the nation backfired — the public’s disapproval of the idea of a troop surge is higher now than it was before President Bush tried to sell the policy.A sense of impending political doom clutches Republican hearts. It is exacerbated by the alarming intelligence brought back from Baghdad by Republican Sen. Norm Coleman (Minn.) and passed around Capitol Hill. In a pre-Christmas visit to Iraq, Coleman and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida met with Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi government’s national security adviser. Coleman described their astounding encounter in a December 19 blog post: “Dr. Rubaie maintains that the major challenge facing Iraq is not a sectarian conflict but rather al Qaeda and disgruntled Baathists seeking to regain power. Both Sen. Nelson and I react with incredulity to that assessment. Rubaie cautions against more troops in Baghdad.”
Novak cites other troubling examples of the attitude of Iraq government officials, then writes:
This hastens the desire of Republicans, who once cheered the Bush Doctrine in the Middle East, to remove U.S. forces from a politically deteriorating situation as soon as possible. Iraq, one of Bush’s top political advisers now notes, is a black hole for the Republican Party. A nationally prominent Republican pollster reported confidentially on Capitol Hill after the President’s speech that if U.S. boots are still on the ground in Iraq and U.S. blood is still being spilled there at the end of the year, the GOP disaster in 2008 will eclipse 2006.
So if reports are true that George Bush is steadfast in his determination to essentially stay in Iraq until adjustments in the war plan lead to victory, the stage is set in 2007 for Bush to be at odds with a nearly unified Democratic party and big chunks of his own party.
Keep in mind that Novak has always had excellent Republican sources. And another glaringly significant tidbit he offers is this:
Many Republican congressmen have tied their hopes to Bush’s pledge that Iraqi forces will take over local security by September. But they do not know how that victory can be achieved if the Iraqi government is tied to the Shiite militia, a political problem in Iraq that no increase in U.S. troops can solve. They can only hope that the Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and her sidekick, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), overplay their hands by cutting off funds to U.S. troops in the field. It is a slim hope for now
In other words, his sources don’t think it’s likely Pelosi will gobble the hook with the bait in front her — a hook actually put out there by members of Democratic party itself. If there’s a funding cut off, the GOP will take it, and run with it. But barring that, the outlook for the GOP is gloomy — unless Bush’s surge/escalation/augmentation works or there’s a pulling back of U.S. forces by the end of the year. Novak also correctly notes that any kind of Congressional resolution coming out against the surge, even if it doesn’t have any practical impact, will do one thing: it will widely be seen as a vote of no confidence in Bush.
11 Responses to “Novak: Bush’s Surge Speech Backfired Politically”
Novak’s sources may be excellent, but how reliable is Dr. Rubaie? Iraq is a lost cause, everything done from now on out is the republicans trying to make the democrats look responsible for the policy failure and the loss of our troops in Iraq.
Rubaie is not at all reliable. If this report is true Coleman and Nelson knew that he was lying to their faces — or insane.
Not exactly the makings of being confident in their success.
Novak has also been a critic of the Iraq War long before the US invasion, and before many Democrats (certainly before John Kerry
.
That is a critical context to situate this post.
That said, Joe is right in that Novak is probably echoing a lot of backroom talk.
Which is more important: the war in Iraq, or the war at home? As with Vietnam, the home front will likely determine success in the field. The Tet Offensive was an overwhelming US victory – it effectively destroyed the Viet Cong as a force in the war – yet was a devastating defeat in the war for public opinion on the home front.
Bush has lost the home front but, as Joe’s post notes, everyone is afraid to pull the plug.
The game of trying to blame the Democrats for the failures in Iraq has already begun. Is suspect it will hot and heavy as things drag over in Iraq. The only question is how successful the Republicans will be at pulling the blame game off, and how the Democrats will respond to the game (while will play into how successful, or unsuccessful the Republicans are).
My sense also is that the reason everyone is afraid to “pull the plug” (and they all are), is that no one knows how to without “blowing out the entire power system”. We are truely between a very large rock, and a very very hard place. Whatever we do is going to result in bad repercussion.
I commented before that it will take a bipartisan concensus to get us out of Iraq. The GOP doesn’t want this albatross around their necks in ’08, but the Democrats still have thirty-year old scars from cutting off the funds for Vietnam. That is why they have been so timid in speaking up. It was heartening to see the strong presence of Chuck Hagel joining Sens. Biden and Levin in the non-binding resolution against the surge. His voice bears more weight than theirs. Getting out of Iraq should be an urgent matter for both parties if they want to survive the voters’ wrath in the next election.
The interests of Bush and congressional Republicans have sharply diverged. I’m sure they don’t give a hoot about his legacy, and just want to survive the coming electoral debacle.
As I’ve pointed out so often even I’m getting tired of it, the Dems in general and Pelosi in particular are smarter than the GOP thinks. The “where’s your plan?” attack, which I’ve heard from many here was tried on Pelosi during the Social Security fiasco. Pelosi outsmarted the maligner-in-chief by refusing to bite on that baited hook, even though Dems and pundits and news anchors from all over the political spectrum insulted Dems for not having a plan. Well, hope they choked on it, because America had no stomach for what the GOP was offering, just like now, and all the Dems had to do was sit back and watch them slash their wrists.
Well, Republicans who want any scraps of the GOP left standing in 2009, time to get the Republican legislators to impeach this maniac (hah. we’re not gonna do it), or just circle the drain with him, circle the drain……
If they act together to get us out, both parties will survive. The whole episode will be blamed on W, and the 6 years of the comatose Republican Congress will be forgiven. It looks like a scenario that is coming together. At least 12 GOP senators will vote with the Dems on their resolution, which beats the rubber stamp years by a mile. That is why no war can last longer than public support for it.
Whatever happened to doing the right thing? At somepoint, the people have to put down their glasses of Kool-Aide and voting with their consciences. I guess that is just too much to ask for.
Whatever happened to doing the right thing? At somepoint, people need to put down their glasses of Kool-Aide and start voting with their consciences. I guess that is just too much to ask for with the party known to have “morals and ethics”.
Maybe this has always been how the game was played, and we just hadn’t noticed it before. It does seem that voting your conscience rather than the politics of the situation is getting increasingly rare. Even those Republican Senators who have come out against the surge come from blue states and are up for reelection in ’08. The Dems seem to be more worried about their national security cred than pressuring Bush to accept the Baker plan. The lone stand-up in all of this is Chuck Hagel. He’s the type of politician the country needs right now.
My apologies for the double post. My laptop acts up sometimes and it makes it look like my comment did not go through. Oooopps.