Bush Is Losing Moderate Republicans
We’ve said it many times over the past few months when people have emailed us and said “how can you call yourself a moderate” when we’ve criticized the Bush administration, so we’ll say it again:
It’s getting to the point where you cannot be a moderate and support the Bush administration.
And, according to the Pew Research Center, that’s precisely what’s happening in President George Bush’s part as well:
As public approval of George W. Bush languishes at all-time low levels, supporters of the president are increasingly hard to find. In the months following his re-election, roughly half of the country rated Bush’s job performance favorably. Today only a third of Americans do so, while more than half (56%) disapprove of his performance. These latest figures are based on a Pew Research Center survey conducted April 27-May 22, among a national sample of 3,204 adults, a large enough survey to allow for a more detailed breakdown of where and how opinion has changed since the election.
While the decline in support transcends ideological and demographic lines, the drop among one group – moderate Republicans – has been especially steep. Among all Republicans, Bush’s job approval rating has dropped 20 percentage points since December 2004 (from 89% to 69%). This erosion of support has been most severe among Republicans describing themselves as moderate or liberal, where his rating has dropped 25 points from 81% to 56%.Conservative Republican support for Bush has also declined, but more gradually. Approval among this group was nearly unanimous (93%) following his re-election, and stands 15 points lower at 78% today.
But there are far more conservatives than moderates in the GOP; as many as two-thirds of Republicans identify themselves as conservative. This means that even though the drop off in their support has been more gradual, the implications are no less serious. Translated into real numbers, just as many conservative Republicans as moderate and liberal Republicans have grown frustrated with the president’s leadership over the past year-and-a-half. While a much larger share of moderate and liberal Republicans disapprove of the president, they make up only a minority of the GOP.
That’s why we’re seeing the political ballet over a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, even thought virtually everyone knows it is going to flop. And that’s also why Congressional and Bush action on illegal immigration ain’t over ’til it’s over: there could be a hardening of the stances before this is over. Bush and the GOP need that conservative base. Why? Because Bush and his party did NOT reach out to other elements in the American polity that would have allowed them to put together a coalition that could still be workable if one component of it was missing.
The question then becomes: can the Democrats attract some of these wavering GOP moderates (and there are not many around) or liberals (and there are fewer of those around)? Or is what we’re seeing in the GOP, and in the Democratic party where many on the left want Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman’s political scalp, part of a process where moderates must decide ASAP on whether they want to be on the right or on the left — or be seen as irrelevant?
8 Responses to “Bush Is Losing Moderate Republicans”
Can’t we just have our own Party?
I’m not a moderate Republican or a liberal Republican, but I think in a parallel universe I could be. I’d best be called a moderate Democrat or a progressive centrist. I’ve almost always voted Democrat (with the exception of a few congressional seats about 20 years ago), but the Dems are kind of pissing me off lately. I’m feeling less at home in the Party of Pelosi, I cringe when I even hear the word Kerry, and I wonder how Howard Dean, who used to be a progressive centrist governor became a wacked-out, Cindy Sheehan-hugging, vote-mongering whore.
You know, if someone from either party grabs the center in 2008, not only will they win, but they will usher in an era of radical change in the political structure, almost certainly all for the better.
What’s interesting is that in this time when a frighteningly powerful GOP is behaving outrageously, is increasingly out of touch with America, and seems divorced from any sort of consistent philosophy of government, economics or social ethics, a life-long Democrat like me is feeling increasingly alienated from the so-called opposition party.
I’m wondering if there is some good in all of this-that the ensuing shake-out will help redefine the parties, shift some loose coalitions, and maybe even encourage re-thinking of Big Party Politics. That is, if Bush and the spending-happy GOP congress don’t sell our future to China or ensure, wither there Nativist outlook and possibly policies, that we start catching up with Europe in the home-grown terrorist department.
Jeez.
Bush losing the support of Republicans – whether moderate or conservative – will have an impact on what he is able to accomplish during the remainder of his term but will have no impact on the 08 Presidential election.
Not that the prospective GOP nominees were going to do so anyway, but Bush’s pathetic numbers guarantee that not a single one of them will run as the ‘keeper of the flame’… they will all run away from Bush. Thus the 08 election – first the GOP primary and then the general electin – will be a choice between two (or more) ways of being different from Bush.
And in such an election, the GOP standard-bearer will, in my opinion, suffer not the least from being the GOP nominee. Unlike in 2000, where Gore couldn’t distance himself from Clinton, the GOP nominee in 2008 will have no such problem… as his entire campaign will have been built around creating distance from Bush. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Bush – the sitting President – relegated to a sideshow at the 08 GOP convention….
If Mark Warner gets the nod in 08, he wins in a landslide. Nobody else will have anything approaching an “easy” go of it from the Dem side. Fortunately, Warner is starting to criticize Hillary and not seek out her VP nomination.
Is it my imagination, or are most people feeling totally alienated from both parties, especially on the national level? The Republicans have shamelessly pandered to the Christian right, enacted a hollow ethics bill, and continue to be involved in scandal after scandal. Only the rich seem to benefit from their domestic agenda. When Bush was popular, the Republicans united behind their president, when the poll numbers began to fall, they deserted him like rats from a sinking ship.
The Democrats, with the exception of a few, are the party of so many special interest groups that they have ended up standing for nothing. They seem to lack discipline and party unity, and put their foot in their mouths constantly-Pelosi, Busby,McKinney, Dean, Kerry. Dean wasted a ton of donated cash on building Democratic organizations in states where the Democrats have no hope of succeeding, instead of concentrating on key races, so that they could win back the majority. Their “culture of corruption” campaign is negated by the actions of Jefferson and the ex-chairman of the ethics committee (can’t remember his name). They just seem to be politically handicapped and out of touch. If they can’t capitalize on the problems of the Republicans this time around, they will no longer be a viable alternative.
The main problem is that we’ve had the same two parties just too danged long, and they’ve both silted up, ala “The Peter Principle”. This makes getting anything useful done almost impossible, and at the same time they’re so entrenched that at anything past the local level if they get any significant number of votes at all, third parties can almost count on throwing the election to the one of the top two which they least resemble. Especially since the point spread is getting narrower and narrower at the top (mostly I suspect from a general feeling of “a pox on both your houses.”)
This sucks.
What we do about it? I’ve no idea. But if anybody with more resources than I have wants to start a Radical Middle party, I think I may join.
I can add little to what Steve Sturm had to say . But my response to the tag line for the post would be :
If Bush is losing mederate Republicans , where the hell will they go ?
But you can be a moderate Republican without villifying Bush. You can admire his dogged determination to create stable democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq even if you didn’t agree that invading Iraq was necessary and even as you grate your teeth over the latest boneheaded statement by Rumsfeld or whoever saying that Al Qaeda is on the ropes or we’ve turned a corner in the insurgency. However, Murtha’s stab in the back dujour rankles me much more. Rumsfeld is merely hamfisted, not a turncoat. As a former soldier, my view of Murtha has changed from concerned to pity to disgust.
I think Bush has utterly failed in his duties to rally the country and use his office as a bully pulpit. He shows much too little concern for the people he’s supposed to be inspiring. Heck, it’s his duty to do so! However, Bush’s cluelessness and maddening lack of leadership pales against things like calling for a deadline for troop withdrawals which periodically come from the other side of politics. That’s about as sure a recipe for national disaster (Iraq isn’t Vietnam, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make it into one if we try hard enough) as I’ve seen since the end of the Cold War. Bush continues to fail in his presidential duty as a uniter of the people, but he isn’t pursuing a plan to recreate the body blow to the nation’s psyche that Vietnam was. At least he understands his country that well.
I know many here will disagree with my opinions, but I’m not trying to convince anyone in this post, I’m merely showing how a moderate Republican who voted for Clinton can be severely ticked off at W but still feel more affinity for the red than the blue.
I could still vote for someone like Mark Warner in 2008, though.
It seems that anyone who tries to govern from the center, wreaks the wrath of both the extreme right and the extreme left. The middle, though larger than either is rarely as active politically both in raising money or organizing voter turnout. Politicians tend to respond to whatever makes the most noise, which is why we have bounced from one extreme to the other.
GWB was backed by mostly conservative groups, but ran as a moderate, which was enough to convince the less-involved middle to vote for him. I really think this is a wake-up call to moderates to get more involved in the political process, so that we can offer support to centrist candidates, while weeding out the extremes of both parties.
PING:
TITLE: Bush Is Losing Moderate Republicans
BLOG NAME: Booker Rising
Argues The Moderate Voice, responding to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. Conservative Republican support for Bush has also declined, but it has been more gradual. The moderate-liberal blog writes: “That’s why we’re seeing the political ba…
PING:
TITLE: Bush Is Losing Moderate Republicans
BLOG NAME: Booker Rising
Argues The Moderate Voice, responding to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. Conservative Republican support for Bush has also declined, but it has been more gradual. The moderate-liberal blog writes: “That’s why we’re seeing the political ba…