The GOP is in a tailspin. The
base is drifting, internal party conflicts are
starting to go public,
poll numbers are in the toilet and even the party faithful
are quietly trying to herd Bush back into line with public opinion. What's a party in free fall to do? Simple. Start running to the left!
[More after the jump...]
Signs are emerging that the Republican survival strategy for 2006 might involve a certain amount of blue camouflage and a whole lotta distance from George W. Bush.
He insisted he wasn't changing direction or policy. But when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his new chief of staff Wednesday, he took a giant step toward trying to reinvent himself politically.
In naming Democrat Susan Kennedy, a former Cabinet secretary to ousted Gov. Gray Davis, Schwarzenegger hopes to convince skeptical voters in a heavily Democratic state that he's not the combative, partisan figure they saw during his ill-fated special election campaign.
They are planning on significant reductions of U.S. troops once a permanent Iraqi government is chosen in the Dec. 15 elections. To help build a political framework for that government, U.S. officials privately went so far as to endorse the call for a "withdrawal timetable" that was issued recently by Iraqi leaders.
What is intriguing is that the administration's emerging position isn't all that different from the critique offered last week by Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden. Both are talking about cutting U.S. troop strength, relying on Iraqi security forces and brokering a compromise among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
[...]Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kennedy invited Bush to the Twin Cities on Dec. 9 to speak at a fundraising luncheon.
The president is expected to raise more than $1 million for Kennedy, the 6th District congressman. Then Bush will quickly get out of town before he becomes a drag on Kennedy's campaign.
If Bush's popularity rankings don't start to improve significantly, don't expect to see him back in Minnesota any time soon. While he's unparalleled as a fundraiser, he could become a political liability later on the campaign trail for an otherwise strong Minnesota Republican Party and its candidates.
"My hunch is this may be his last visit" before the 2006 elections, Larry Jacobs, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, said last week.
I suspect there are more than a few Republicans hoping to sneak under the radar in 2006, which strikes me as rather naive in an era of blogs and online news archives. We'll be watching to see just how big this trend gets. My sense? Republicans are getting a little glassy-eyed watching the polls and the calendar, so don't be surprised if you hear one quoting Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi sometime soon.
[Cross-posted at Chaos Digest]