A lot of hopeful attention has been paid to the fact that a certain portion of Republicans have been expressing their disgust with the president who lost New Orleans. True, there are probably more wingers who are
Trying to Shore Up Bush's Crumbling post-Katrina Support (courtesy of MeteorBlades), and the spin machine will no doubt be back in full form pretty soon.
And yet it is undeniable that a lot of conservatives are pissed-off as hell.
Basically, their disillusionment can be divided into two categories:
- disillusion with Bush as a leader
- disillusion with Bush's policies (of gutting the New Deal in favor of global adventurism)
It may seem that both types of criticism work in our favor, albeit in different ways, for the two types of criticism might even work together synergistically. But nothing could be farther from the truth. One of these two types of conservative criticisms of the post-Katrina disaster actually goes totally against Democratic interests.
And this something we have got to become damn clear about if we want to prevent these people from making a come-back.
I explain, after the fold...
First, I'll give an example of the second type of criticism courtesy of Andrew Sullivan:
"Neoconservatism has always been an ideology dependent on the global projection of national power. What gave it its strength was that after 9/11, Americans were so angry at the assault that they wanted to go overseas and attack those responsible - thus was 'The War on Terror' born.
They were lied into thinking that the removal of Saddam Hussein would make the world a safer and more prosperous place. Clearly it hasn't; if anything, you're more at risk riding the Tube now than you were three years ago.
The lie has been shown not to stand up; and when that has not only failed but has been shown to have failed, what can an ideology based on the global projection of national power do when confronted with a crisis which shows it to be nationally powerless?
Nothing. The collapsed levees of New Orleans will have consequences for neoconservatism just as long and deep as the collapse of the Wall in East Berlin had on Soviet Communism; for when hacks and fulminators like John Podhoretz are openly criticizing the president, the Great Leader, the ideology is on the way out. And hopefully all of those who urged the ideology on, myself included, will have a long time to consider the error of our ways.' - Martin Kelly , G-Gnome.
Link
Here we see a fundamental questioning of Republican "starve the beast" policies.
On the other hand, we see a lot of criticisms which rather than going after the policies, go agains the person (George Bush). With these it is a matter of blasting him for failing to do anything for five days, thus calling his personal leadership qualities into question. See for example the many comments brought to our attention by Blue Intrigue's diary,
Fox Fans Are Pissed. The gist of these is to focus only on the post-Katrina failures. For example, we hear lots of statements like this:
"Why did our government not do better a job of stepping in after Katrina? Once again, a poorly orchestrated response finally being expanded after much damage has been done."
Both these post-Katrina criticism and those having to do with pre-Katrina Republican policies (that go back to 1980 at least) have a lot of appeal to us, since they are both true: Bush's policies are a failure and he is a personal failure as a leader. And from our perspective these may appear as flip sides of the same coin.
But, let us remember that Bush is a lame-duck. He will soon be gone, and whatever bad taste he leaves in people's mouths will only go so far in winning future elections (just think about the Reupublican resurgence despite the Nixon debacle).
As much as I loath they guy, it is important to state loud and clear that Bush is not the problem. The real problem --the problem that will be with us long after Bush is gone-- is Republicanism. It's not the person but the policy!
But why aren't the two types of criticism compatible?
Imagine this: you are a Republican who wants to go on privatizing the state and dismantling the New Deal. Unlike Martin Kelly, quoted above, you have yet to feel even a sliver of doubt about the righteousness of these goals. What is the very best way for you to hide the fact that this kind of conservatism has been proven once and for all to be an abyssmal failure? The answer is easy: You blame the President's post-disaster leadership failures for the fact that things are FUBAR.
In other words, it works to the long-term advantage of Republicans to keep on repeating: "If Bush had only acted quicker, everything would be okay." This is false. The levies broke because funding was cut and shifted to "homeland [in]security" and to the Iraq War. Things are FUBAR because of long-standing Republican policies and not because of everything Bush failed to do in the wake of the disaster. His failures only made things worse --they are not the root cause.
Let's keep our eyes on the ball here, and not let welcome criticisms of Bush's leadership muddy the waters. Right now, as one brilliant diary (by Leaves on the Current) noted: this could be (and should be) the end of conservatism as we know it. But it's still up to us to to make this happen --it's not going to be automatic.
So let's all read and re-read kingubu's insightful diary, RIP, GOP (An Exhortation), which correctly analyzes this whole thing in terms of policy and long term strategy so that we can make his exhortation it a reality!
Update [2005-9-4 11:3:46 by Nate Roberts]: In response to the comments, I think the analytic distinction can be clarified with a little thought experiment:
Imagine if, instead of sitting on his ass for the first five days after the disaster, Bush immediately swung into action. It is conceivable that he could have come off looking like a hero.
But even if he had done this, the root problem would remain: the hurricain was a total disaster not because it was an act of god but because of long-standing Republican policies of "starve the beast" at home, while draining precious resources into military adventurism abroad.
I wish Bush had behaved heroically in the immediate aftermath of the storm. Many, many lives could have been saved. But even that would not get him off the hook. The real problem is that levies hadn't been improved, there was no evacuation plan of anyone who didn't own a car and a credit card, etc., etc., etc.
If we allow the public discussion to be entirely dominated by a debate over who did what and when post-Katrina then attention will be shifted away from the underlying policies that caused this disaster in the first place. I'm sure Rove would like nothing more than to muddy the waters in this way, and in the end to distribute the blame over many parties: mayors, governors... even Brown.
But none of this touches the nub of the issue, which is not about Bush it is about Republicanism itself.
So it's not an either/or thing, of course. We can and should expose both Bush's post-Katrina failures and the underlying failures of Republican policy. My point is that of the two, our critical energies will receive the better pay-off if we focus our LTEs, etc., on the real problem: Republicanism.