As America marks the first anniversary of the troop escalation in Iraq, at least one thing has become clear. Although the “surge” is failing as policy, it seems to be succeeding as propaganda. Even as George W. Bush continues to bump and scrape along the bottom of public approval, significantly more people now believe we are “winning” the war.
What winning really means and whether that vague impression can be sustained are questions that the war’s proponents would prefer not to answer for the moment. Their objective during this election year is simply to reduce public pressure for withdrawal, which is still the choice of an overwhelming majority of voters. ~Joe Conason
This is pretty much in line with what I argued in one of my TAC columns last month (sorry, not online). As others have noted, the real political goal of the “surge” seems not to have been to stabilise a viable Iraqi government, but to shore up collapsing support for the war here. Even so, the domestic political effects have mostly been limited to Washington. Public opinion remains as resolutely against the war as it was a year ago. Three quarters of Americans do not want a “large number” of troops in Iraq two years from now, and half the country wants most of our forces out in less than a year.
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January 18th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
M.Z. Forrest
I think the war has more saliance than has been let on. While outside Ron Paul, the Republican foreign policy debate has been completely predictable and uninteresting, the voters have basically ignored the Repbublican candidates. In Iowa and New Hampshire, those voting on the Democratic side outnumbered Republicans 2:1. Even in Michigan, ‘uncommitted’ on the Democratic side had more votes than all the Republicans except Romney and McCain, and McCain just barely beat it.
January 18th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Daniel Larison
There’s no question in my mind that the war is going to be a significant factor in the election and work against the GOP, or rather it has already been a significant factor in shifting party identification, fundraising, recruiting and independents’ preferences in the Dems’ favour since 2006. This is why I still think that a McCain nomination would mean disaster for the GOP’s electoral fortunes. His ability to win antiwar voters is remarkable, but I’m not persuaded that this will hold up in the general election. Huckabee has occasionally gestured in the direction of sanity with his grab-bag approach, but as I have said before I see this as just a Bushesque ploy to cover up for foreign policy ignorance. The other leading candidate seems hopeless on this question, and Giuliani is mad. This is why I find Karl Rove’s advice to the GOP nominee completely crazy. I suppose the thinking here is that the GOP is already unavoidably tied to the war, so running away from it would just put them in the position of being an imitation of their opposition, but the idea that you would emphasise Iraq as a *winning* issue seems disconnected from reality.
The post paraphrasing Rove said:
That last part is actually right. That was what the 2006 election was about. The 2008 election will be partly over the failure of U.S. policy in the last year and what we do now.
January 18th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Magnus
Mr. Larison,
You’ve criticized all the leading Republican candidates eloquently, and all of them seem in one way or the other to be unfit for the office they are seeking. However, given that one of them (at this point I assume that would be McCain, Romney, Huckabee or Giuliani) has to win the nomination, which one would you prefer as the least bad?
January 18th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Daniel Larison
I have toyed with the idea that Huckabee may be the least bad of the four, and I think that probably still holds true. With Pinkerton advising him, it is may be more true now than it was a month ago. He has flip-flopped on immigration, changed his position on a national smoking ban and generally run away from the kinds of policies he embraced while governor, which makes him every bit as fraudulent as Romney, but which puts him most in sync with Republican voters.
I suppose a case can be made for Romney as the least of the four evils, and I know some of the people who read this blog take that view (or they may even regard Romney as a positive choice), but counterintuitively Romney has greater electability problems than Huckabee, and I’m not referring mainly to anti-Mormon sentiment (though that doesn’t help). In a year when the GOP is already dispirited and divided, Romney generates neither great enthusiasm nor great confidence outside of his home state, and he seems completely unsuited to the political climate of 2008. His reputation for competence isn’t in question, but the “atmospherics” of his campaign, as some might call it, are all wrong for this year.
On the other hand, Romney has the activists, institutional support and money, pretty much all of which Huckabee lacks. Maybe if you brought the two of them together on the same ticket (which would probably not realistically happen) with Huckabee on the top of the ticket, they might complement one another and cover the other’s weaknesses, and between the two of them they could theoretically unite virtually all of the factions of the party. The problem with this is that they have been such fierce rivals that all their old attack ads and criticisms against one another could be used in the general. Then again, if these two came together on the same ticket it would be a powerful symbol of party unity and reconciliation between different factions. Still, the problem with this scenario is that Romney is on the verge of being eliminated and polls weakly in most Feb. 5 states–such is his “viability”-and might not represent the anti-Huckabee forces by the time it becomes a two-man race.
In the end, I think the voters are going to prefer Huckabee to Romney, and the party and movement establishments will have to decide whether they distrust McCain more than they loathe Huckabee. Where McCain alienates some social conservatives, partly because of campaign finance, partly because of his dismissive attitude towards them, and partly because the Santorums are on the warpath against him, Huckabee shores up the GOP’s social conservative voters. Plus, as a former governor, he brings executive experience against a Democratic candidate from the Senate. So I think Huckabee is probably the least bad of four pretty bad alternatives, and he could well be the most competitive candidate the GOP can put up this year.
January 18th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
OldNewEngland
Actually, Dan, Romney doesn’t inspire much confidence or excitement even within MassGOP circles. Or at least he didn’t in the recent past. I don’t work there anymore, but during last winter/spring (admittedly before he hit his stride) skepticism, doubt, and even irritation were common, even in party H.Q. Probably something to do with the sense that Romney abandoned the state party too soon, leaving it to a liberal-leaning electorate that creamed Healy in favor of Deval Patrick.