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The Wreck of the War Party
by Doug Bandow

The wild, drunken neocon joyride is over. After running as the candidate of national restraint and humility, George W. Bush metamorphosed into a modern Alexander the Great, promising to bring civilization and democracy to both the known and unknown worlds. He mobilized popular support for war in Iraq by manipulating dubious intelligence and spinning idyllic fantasies. The Republicans increased their congressional majorities by demonizing their critics, suggesting that opposition equaled defeatism and treason. The results were GOP victories in 2002 and 2004.

But like a classic Ponzi scheme, the Republican political scam eventually had to end. For a time the GOP could blame its manifold failures on former President Bill Clinton, Democratic Party opposition, media bias, French perfidy, foreign faithlessness, Pakistani double-dealing, UN ineffectiveness, Iranian interference, Russian skullduggery, and more. After six years, however, there is no one left to blame.

America has squandered its immense store of moral capital after Sept. 11. Iraq is a catastrophe, a strategic mistake of enormous proportions. North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon. Iran is busy moving ahead with its own atomic program. China and Russia, along with much of Europe, cheerfully obstruct, oppose, impede, and hinder U.S. initiatives. The American government is hated around the world, and especially in the Muslim and Arab worlds.

Democratic movements in Egypt and Lebanon are fizzling. The Sudanese conflict continues to rage. Latin America has embraced unregenerate leftists Hugo Chávez and Daniel Ortega despite Washington's angry mutterings. Russia is reasserting its influence in the nations of Georgia and Ukraine. Today the U.S. government is more distrusted and Americans are less secure than before George W. Bush took office.

The domestic policy record is no better. Massive spending increases. Little respect and sometimes overt disdain for civil liberties. Centralization of power in Washington. The biggest expansion of the welfare state in 40 years. No progress on Social Security reform. And fulfillment of Lord Acton's famous warning about power: pervasive abuse, pork-barreling, self-dealing, and corruption in the Republican-controlled Congress.

Perhaps most important has been the administration's astounding combination of arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 George W. Bush's stubborn simplicity seemed to affirm America's moral rightness; today the president's unchanging rhetoric in the face of endless disaster is recognized as dangerous indifference to reality. It has become all too evident to the majority of Americans that President Bush makes policy based on how he believes the world should be, not on how it really is.

The Republicans still thought they had a chance to hang on to their congressional majorities. Maldistricting in the House made it hard to dislodge more than a handful of incumbents. Moreover, GOP candidates sought to keep the contest focused on local issues.

The Republican demagoguery machine also was directed against Democratic congressional challengers – the president allowed that he wouldn't say they were traitors or unpatriotic, but he said: "The Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: the terrorists win and America loses." The Republicans preferred to discuss sex scenes in novels by Virginia Democratic Senate hopeful James Webb rather than the war in Iraq or congressional overspending. The GOP recognized that nothing was more important than avoiding a debate over the party's actual record in office.

Thankfully, the people were not fooled. Election-day polling found widespread dissatisfaction with Republicans on many issues, particularly congressional abuses. Most important, however, the election turned into a vote on George Bush and his misbegotten, unnecessary war in Iraq. Even a third of white evangelicals, perhaps the GOP's most reliable voting bloc, pulled a Democratic lever. Observes Gary Jacobson of the University of California-San Diego, "One thing that's true is this will have been a referendum election."

President Bush's approval rating is below 40 percent. Twice as many voters used their congressional ballot to express opposition as support for the president. While his sky-high approval ratings once helped elect Republicans to Congress, now he dragged them down.

Perhaps even more important was the war, deemed the most critical issue by voters – 49 percent said that Iraq was "extremely important." Almost 60 percent of voters disapproved of the ongoing debacle, roughly twice the number who supported the conflict. Critics of the war were far more likely, by a four-to-one margin, to choose Democrats for Congress. Opposition to the war was particularly important in moving independents and moderates into the Democratic column. An exit poll found that 56 percent of voters favored withdrawal of some or all U.S. troops from Iraq.

Although people vote for or against candidates for many reasons, the war clearly affected many races. Before the balloting, pollster John Zogby observed, "Our polling has shown that several key issues have benefited the Democrats heading into next week's election, but the war, far and away, has been the most important." One unnamed GOP campaign analyst told the Washington Times, "The Iraq war is an overwhelming presence in this election that dwarfs all other issues. It is the issue of this campaign, and it is draining all enthusiasm out of GOP partisans while motivating the Democrats."

It was James Webb's opposition to the war, and Sen. George Allen's unthinking, reflexive support of the Bush administration, that led Webb to switch parties, run, and win. Democrat Carol Shea-Porter, a county chairman, rode opposition to the war to an unexpected victory over Rep. Jeb Bradley (R-N.H.). Explicitly antiwar candidates also defeated Reps. Anne Northrup (R-Ky.) and Clay Shaw (R-Fla.).
*Doug Bandow is a Washington-based political writer and policy analyst and a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy. He served as a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and as a senior policy analyst in the 1980 Reagan for President campaign.*
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