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August 18, 2004
THE TIDE IS TURNING
From the beginning of the campaign, Rove & company have known that this election would be tight. They know that Democrats have been waiting for the chance to beat him at the polls (again) for three and a half years now, and that relatively few Gore voters were going to switch sides. They've been saying all along that Bush's hopes rest not just on getting swing voters and playing up his perceived strength on terrorism and defense... but on shoring up his Republican base and making sure that his core supporters remain firmly in his camp.
Don't look now, but his Republican base is starting to abandon him too.
Two items caught my eye today; first, the outgoing Vice Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Doug Bereuter (R-Nebraska) has declared that Bush's war in Iraq was an unjustified mistake. (In 2002, Bereuter vocally supported the House resolution authorizing President Bush to go to war.)
"I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action," Bereuter wrote in a letter to his constituents. "Left unresolved for now is whether intelligence was intentionally misconstrued to justify military action," he said...
"Now we are immersed in a dangerous, costly mess, and there is no easy and quick way to end our responsibilities in Iraq without creating bigger future problems in the region and, in general, in the Muslim world." Bereuter said that as a result of the war, "our country's reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened."
Look at that again, kids. A 13-term member of the House -- and a member of the President's own party -- feels that it's still an open question as to whether intelligence was intentionally misconstrued. A leading House Republican sees the damage that Bush has done to American prestige -- shredding our international reputation -- and has called it out. When even Republicans are finally having to acknowledge what that cretin has done to the name of our great nation, you can feel it slipping away for Bush.
While I am sure we'll hear more whining about the allegedly liberal media, George Will is no one's idea of a liberal. Yet even he's turning on Bush. Check out his column in today's Washington Post, called "Ignoring History In Iraq." Not only does Will start the column by pointing out that by election day, Bush's folly will have lasted longer than US involvement in World War I, the Spanish-American War, and the 1846 war with Mexico... Will also does what up until now only Democrats and left-leaning pundits have done: openly draws parallels between Iraq and Vietnam.
[The US position in Iraq may be] Untenable even before what may be coming before November: an Iraqi version of the North Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968. To say that the coming offensive will be by "Baathists" is, according to one administration official, akin to saying "Nazis" when you mean "the SS" -- the most fearsome of the Nazis. Such an offensive could make Sadr's insurgency seem a minor irritant. And it could unmake a presidency, as Tet did.
Now, is Will openly equating Vietnam and Iraq? Not hardly. But the fact that one of the leading conservative columnists and pundits in the country is even raising the comparison in print is incredibly significant. It shows that even conservatives and Republicans have begun to lose patience with the bumblings of the neocon cabal.
