The War Party

Sometimes, you get things wrong. In January, just as the long march to primary season was getting under way, I wrote a piece for the Atlantic in which I argued that in spite of the conservative movement's dreams of a return to small-government purity and the media's fantasy of a revived Rockefeller Republicanism, George W. Bush's mix of social conservatism, "big government" conservatism, and overseas interventionism would continue to define the GOP for some time to come. In particular, I suggested that you could see this dynamic at work in the primary field - none of whose leading contenders hailed from the foreign-policy realist wing of the party, none of whom were associated with Gingrichian government-cutting (including Newt Gingrich, version 2.0), and none of whom, including the pro-choice Rudy, seemed eager to pick a fight with social conservatives.

For this election cycle, at least, my prediction doesn't look so hot.

Four months into the primary season, the Republican candidates are all running way to the right on domestic policy, talking about tax cuts and porkbusting and abandoning the territory that Bush tried to swipe from the Democrats; meanwhile, the man currently leading in the GOP primary polls, Rudy Giuliani, seems to have decided that his path to the nomination requires a frontal assault on the party's social-conservative consensus. The only place where there hasn't been any serious deviation from Bushism is foreign policy, and particularly the war in Iraq, which is the one place where I thought deviations were most likely.

What's going on? This, probably. When asked to name the issue they care most about, 31 percent of Republican voters picked the War in Iraq, another 17 percent picked terrorism, and another 8 percent picked "foreign policy." More potential GOP primary voters picked Iraq, in particular, than picked the economy, health care, education, abortion, and immigration combined. So while in a peacetime primary season, savvy candidates would be paying attention to, say, the fact that the Republican base is more amenable to universal health-care and anti-poverty spending than it used to be, in this primary season there's little to be gained from taking any risks on domestic policy, because the winner is going to be the guy who voters want in charge of the war in Iraq, full stop. Similarly, whereas in a peacetime primary season, Rudy Giuliani might have fumbled onward with his "I hate abortion/I like Sam Alito/I'm pro-choice/a judge could decide either way" eight-step because the alternative was certain defeat, in this primary season his "Iraq should trump abortion" line actually might have a chance of playing in Peoria.
The difficulty, of course, is that a primary battle fought entirely over who's going to kick the most ass in Iraq, with rote invocations of Reagan substituting for policy debate on virtually every other issue, is likely to produce a nominee wildly out-of-step with the concerns of the larger electorate. (It's a very bad sign for the GOP when Frank Rich's analysis of the party's woes is largely correct.) In this context, the frontloaded primary season may be the only thing that can save the Republicans from defeat in '08, since it will give the eventual nominee time to refit his campaign for November - time that it looks like he'll desperately need.

Comments

Ross, any thoughts on why GOP primary voters are so out of step with reality on this?

I can't see why they're choosing to believe the president over their own lying eyes (and the advice of every foreign policy and military professional not currently employed by the administration).

Is it a result of the base (in Arabic, "al Qaeda") getting all their news and info from Fox and the conservative echo chamber?

Also, is Rudy's ignorance about foreign policy going to hurt his chances among GOP voters, or do they have an unquenchable appetite for baseless, chest-thumping rhetoric?

Posted by jjj | May 13, 2007 7:09 PM

Re: in this primary season there's little to be gained from taking any risks on domestic policy, because the winner is going to be the guy who voters want in charge of the war in Iraq, full stop.

And Giuliani is not taking a huge risk on abrotion? Given the GOP's history over the last 25 years I would suggest that apostacy on the abortion issue is farm far more significant than any amount of bickering about tax rates, social spending.

Re: why GOP primary voters are so out of step with reality on this?

Simple: the GOP base is wedded to Bush on a level that precludes any interventions from reality. The Evangelicals in particular consider him the Lord's anointed, a David battling various Goliaths, and as such they cannot conceive that he could be wrong, while any criticism of him is tantamount to blasphemy, if not treason. I know that sounds extreme, but I have encountered that attitude rather commonly (go visit Red State, the most sensible of the Rightwing blogs), even in people I otherwise respect. Bush's "cult of personality" may very well drag the GOP down the tubes in 2008.

Posted by JonF | May 13, 2007 9:42 PM

It is remarkable that the Realists have taken themselves out of the 2008 race! You have to wonder why. I think it's because they're all too smart to take over what George W. Bush is going to hand the next president. If you think things are bad now, just wait.

Posted by grytpype | May 14, 2007 9:13 AM

Hmm, Ross seems to have lost his conservative commenters. Or at any rate, those who still support the administration's foreign policy. Which I do--strangely enough, I see the current polled majority as divorced from reality, rather than the reverse. As for who to support in 2008: some combination of steadfastness in foreign policy and electability (that dire word) rules. Therefore, while I prefer Sen. McCain over his rivals, essentially on foreign policy grounds, I might vote for Gov. Romney or (ugh) Mayor Giuliani in the primaries, if I were convinced at that point that Sen. McCain could not win a general election.

It is curious how deeply my fellow Republicans have come to care about foreign policy. I would have said until recently that they were, in their primary concerns, 45% social conservatives, 45% economic conservatives, and (like myself) 10% foreign policy & security hawks; I have expected to be a minority voice within the party coalition. It does indeed seem as if the social conservatives, in particular, have come to view foreign policy as an especial concern, one which *might* trump concern over issues such as abortion. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

Posted by withywindle | May 14, 2007 10:02 AM

We're not out to lunch, it's the D's who have no clue about Iraq. Luckily, since they're not in the executive, they don't have to have a plan.

If you think Obama or Hillary is just going to withdraw all our troops, think again. The mess in Iraq is serious, deadly serious. It cannot just be left alone by any president "for the Iraqis to work out." Democratic voters are never going to get their way on this issue, not from Republicans, not from a Democratic Congress (which only asked for COMBAT troops to be withdrawn if you read the fine print, which would leave tens of thousands of troops in Iraq), and not from a Democratic president.

Most Democrats are living in a fantasy world (because we have no draft, the majority don't get off their ass to really look into what is happening in Iraq beyond explosions on the news) in which varying arguments from "give peace a chance" to "it's not our fight" have no bearing on U.S. foreign policy interests, which are very real in Iraq and which will not be served by a collapse of the Iraqi government and state.

In sum, the war in Iraq is important enough to warrant constant U.S. attention _for the next decade_ and they are so complex that even the most competent president (which I admit Bush is not) is going to have a doozy on his/her hands.

Posted by justin | May 14, 2007 10:35 AM

Ditto what Justin said.

The fact of the matter is that social conservatives may well be willing to side-step the domestic stuff in order to focus on the most important issue of our time, which is the war against radical Islam.

Who cares about furniture arrangement when the house is on fire?

It isn't that the GOP is necessarily "The War Party." It is that the GOP is more likely to deal more effectively and consistently with the threat than the Democrats.

Don't believe me? Just look at the Clinton Years, especially when the Democrats controlled everything. Yikes.

Posted by itzWicks | May 14, 2007 11:14 AM

itzWicks -- the house isn't on fire. There are some annoying people one street over who are having a barbecue and the smoke's getting in our eyes. If that.

Posted by william | May 14, 2007 12:06 PM

Re: Just look at the Clinton Years, especially when the Democrats controlled everything.

Um, the Democrats controlled everything for just two years, 1993 and 1994. Then the GOP controlled Congress. And as I recall the GOP was almost 100% fixated on domestic issues too; neither party showed much interest in foreign policy. And while you may recall the 90s as some sort of horror show, I recall them as a very good decade for America, Tim McVeigh, the OJ trial, and Monica's blue dress notwithstanding.

Posted by JonF | May 14, 2007 12:53 PM

The terrorist states in the mideast, and the threat to the world from Islamic extremists trump most domestic issues, just as Nazis and Japanese trumped most domestic issues in the 40's.

The reality that all Republicans and most independents live with is that we are not safe with the Democrat appeasers in control.

Bush may not be Churchill, but ALL of the Democratic candidates are definitely Neville Chamberlain clones.

For those liberals and other uninformed out there, Chmaberlian was of course the noted Nazi appeaser who would have fit in very well in today's UN or Democratic Party.

Even though Rudy supports out and out murder (partial birth abortion), we might hold our nose and support him from a foreign policy standpoint and oppose his misguided social policies with help from Southern Democrats at the legislative level.

Posted by ChuckR | May 14, 2007 4:00 PM

ChuckR-- never forget that Ronald Reagan is just like Neville Chamberlain.

Remember, if there's one person in history that recurs over and over and over again, it's Adolph Hitler. Munich today, Munich tomorrow, Munich forever!

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | May 14, 2007 4:54 PM

I don't know if Rudy is exactly the hardcore hawk that his supporters imagine him to be.

"But in discussing the deployment of more troops, Mr. Giuliani has been alone in saying that such a strategy may not succeed, potentially providing him cover should the situation in Iraq deteriorate further. And he has put the strategy in a broader context that plays down the importance of Iraq.
Terrorists "are going to continue to be at war with us, no matter what the outcome in Iraq," Mr. Giuliani said recently in New Hampshire. The night before, he said that "there are no sure things," and that if the United States fails in Iraq, "we have to be ready for that, too." In California a few days later, speaking of "the danger of focusing on Iraq too much," he said that complete success there would not win the fight against terrorism, and that failure there would not lose it."

I think we will be done with Iraq by 2009, regardless of who is elected in 2008.

There seems to be a plurality of Republicans who are commited to the Iraq War to the exclusion of all else, whether it be the economy, taxes, abortion, immigration, or whatever. Talking them back off the edge is going to be difficult.

Posted by PatrickW | May 14, 2007 5:41 PM

There is no way I'd vote for a candidate who supports the neocon war in Iraq, except maybe Tancredo, and that is only because he is opposes the third-world invasion of the U.S., which is the greatest threat of our age.

I've already signed the Conservative Exodus Project

http://www.conservativeexodusproject.com/

and thus only support real conservatives.

.

Posted by Nathan | May 14, 2007 7:36 PM

Now for a contrary view. There is reason to think that a Democrat, particularly Hillary, will be more agressive on the war than any republican. First of all, let's forget Iraq. The Iraq campaign of the Terror War is lost. We simply don't have the troops to fix it. But the larger Terror War isn't lost - yet. Hillary is probably the meanest, most vicious snake running for president today, just the qualities we need in a president in time of dirty covert war. Democrats are also very fond of raising taxes, and raising large armies requires a lot of money. One reason Bush failed in Iraq is that he wanted to cut taxes, so he didn't increase the size of the Army after 911. He tried to do the Terror War on the cheap, and doing a war on the cheap is always a mistake. A tax-raising power-mad democrat like Hillary is very unlikely to make that same mistake.

Posted by Andrew P | May 14, 2007 8:06 PM

There is nothing more unrealistic than those who are currently labelled foreign policy "realists" (Ross does not elucidate what he means by the term - in fact, other than regretting his support for toppling Saddam after the fact, I've yet to see him explicate any sort of plausible alternative to what we are doing).

The idea that we can just leave Iraq without disastrous consequences is pure fantasy. It is possible to argue, as Ross has, that given the course of events since March of 2003 we should not have toppled Saddam. But this is entirely irrelevant to deciding what we should do now. We cannot undo the invasion. Nor can we undo the mistakes made after the invasion. There is only one option - keep grinding it out until we win. The alternative is to let Al Qaeda and/or Iran control Iraq, utterly demoralize the liberals and the general population (as opposed to the ruling classes) in the Middle East, and energize the Islamists all over the world.

Posted by Mike S. | May 14, 2007 10:03 PM

That'd be super awesome, Mike S., but to "win," whatever that means, would require an awful lot more dead Americans. And it would require our presence in Iraq to (1) be preventing a civil war, and (2) be advancing a political resolution. There's no evidence that either is happening.

You're right, of course, that there are no good options, and that life for the bulk of Iraqis was, astonishingly, better under Saddam than it is today. I am past the point of believing that our presence is improving matters, or that our presence is going to lead to "victory" at a cost that the country should pay in terms of our dead and maimed.

Talk of "winning" is juvenile; the question must be, does our presence further American interests (which, we both would agree, includes preventing bloodshed among Iraqis and preventing even worse chaos in Iraq).

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | May 14, 2007 10:23 PM

That'd be super awesome, Mike S., but to "win," whatever that means, would require an awful lot more dead Americans.

To give up now requires counting the sacrifices of those already dead & wounded as worthless. Wars often seem hopeless - it is those who have the fortitude and perseverance to stick it out that end up winning.

And it would require our presence in Iraq to (1) be preventing a civil war, and (2) be advancing a political resolution. There's no evidence that either is happening.

Of course our presence is helping to prevent a civil war - the sectarian killings in Baghdad are down significantly since the beginning of the year.

It's also clear that our presence provides room for political progress, even if that progress is not always steady or obvious to us over here. If we leave, the government will fall, since it is too weak currently to stand on its own. And we've already seen a dramatic turnaround with the Sunni tribes in al-Anbar, who are now actively fighting against al Qaeda.

Oh, yes, you forgot to mention al Qaeda. They incontrovertibly see Iraq as the central battlefield against us, and will inevitably use a retreat by the U.S. as a major propaganda victory.

You're right, of course, that there are no good options, and that life for the bulk of Iraqis was, astonishingly, better under Saddam than it is today.

I don't think that is true (at the least it requires a definition of how one evaluates whether life is better or worse), I just said that even if one takes that position, it doesn't automatically entail that leaving is the best option right now.

I am past the point of believing that our presence is improving matters, or that our presence is going to lead to "victory" at a cost that the country should pay in terms of our dead and maimed.

What about the cost of leaving? If Iraq becomes controlled by al Qaeda and/or Iranian proxies who support terrorism, doesn't it seem likely that such a situation will present an even bigger problem in the future? The whole point of invading Afghanistan was not that the Taliban had directly attacked us, but that they were harboring Al Qaeda, who had. How is it that Iraq will not turn into an even more dangerous, and wealthy, Afghanistan if we leave right now? The point is that as messy as the status quo is, the alternatives are much worse.

Talk of "winning" is juvenile; the question must be, does our presence further American interests (which, we both would agree, includes preventing bloodshed among Iraqis and preventing even worse chaos in Iraq).

What is juvenile is the way people insist that Iraq is "lost" simply to reinforce their own ideology or their short term political goals, even though we've suffered low casualties by historical standards, even though the financial cost is easily bearable, even though there are millions of Iraqis and others throughout the Middle East who are depending on us to show a little fortitude when the going gets tough, even though the long-term consequences of our withdrawal will likely be extremely deleterious, and even though there is plenty of evidence that our efforts in Iraq have degraded Al Qaeda's capacity to carry out terror operations elsewhere. What's juvenile is cynically treating the troops as helpless victims (e.g. "we have to bring them home because they're getting killed in a lost cost"), when the troops overwhelmingly support the mission and want to be allowed to continue it. What's juvenile is giving up on our responsibilities as the most powerful nation on earth simply because things have become more difficult than expected.

Posted by Mike S. | May 15, 2007 9:40 AM