We’ve noted this trend on this site for many months now — the isolation of the Bush faction of the Republican Party from other key segments of the party.
U.S. News notes it here:
Colin Powell’s break with the administration’s Iraq policy is more evidence of the rift between the Bush team and members of the Republican establishment in Washington. Powell, who was Bush’s first-term secretary of state and served in senior positions under Ronald Reagan and George H. W.Bush, said yesterday that the United States is losing the Iraq conflict, which he described as a civil war (a term the White House declines to use).
This is the latest manifestation of the deep disenchantment with the current president among foreign-policy advisers to past GOP commanders in chief, including Bush’s father. Resentment is simmering over what these advisers say has been a dismissive attitude by Bush and his senior strategists toward the Iraq Study Group, cochaired by former Secretary of State James Baker, who served Bush the elder.
The U.S. News item also has this quote:
“The administration encouraged Baker to do the Iraq Study Group and then they sawed off his legs,” says a Baker associate, who adds that Bush didn’t like being criticized by the group.
The “Baker associate,” since it’s a blind quote, could be another member of the commission, someone close to Baker, or even (less likely but it would qualify) Baker himself.
The bottom line, however, is that it underlines how:
(1) Powell was highly respected in the Bush 41 administration. He was essentially a visible wall-hanging in the Bush 43 administration, where his influence did not match his national status.
(2) The Bush 41 people, who likely were blind sources in Bob Woodward’s book that was so intensely damaging to Bush 43’s carefully-crafted image (partially-crafted by Woodward in his earlier books, by Bush’s p.r. people, talk show hosts and a compliant news media), have long been unhappy with President George W. Bush’s approach.
(3) The Bush 41 people essentially believed Baker was throwing a lifeline to GWB, who pushed it away and essentially declared that he wanted a lifeline he himself would pick out — one he felt was more to his liking and perhaps sturdier.
If you add in three other factors, it looks as if the United States is in for a turbulent three years. Reports (now denied by the White House) that the Joint Chief of Staffs oppose the administration’s likely plan to boost troops in Iraq suggest growing military opposition to the administration’s analysis. A Democratic Congress expects some kind of shift, not just extra troops to continue the same policy (there will have to be a new endgame if some Demmies go along with the troops plan). And Bush’s political support is evaporating….bigtime.
So, once again, it seems as if the U.S. is experiencing a first in our history: government policy set by positive affirmation, most clearly articulated by White House spokesman Tony Snow: “We will win, we have to win.”
The outlook: a White House increasingly at odds with key parts of its own party (reducing the party’s electoral chances in 2008), not getting solid top military endorsement for its policy in Iraq, resisting (or battling or ignoring) Congress’s attempt to have significant input on policy…all within the framework of fizzling public support.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.