The Teflon President

My latest Bloggingheads appearance, alongside the redoubtable Mark Schmitt, finds me whining (yet again) about the absence of a non-Ron Paul critic of Bush's foreign policy in the GOP field. Daniel Larison, parsing a Washington Post poll, reminds me (yet again) why there isn't one:

The response to question 45 is amazing. Asked of “leaned Republicans” whether Bush is leading the GOP in the right direction or the wrong direction 65% still say he is leading the party in the right direction ... The support for Bush’s party leadership helps to explain why most of the GOP presidential candidates are not heading off in bold new directions. They find themselves confronted with core constituencies that apparently think Mr. Bush has been good for the Republican Party and is doing the right sorts of things for that party, so they have to play along. It is basically inexplicable why all these Republicans think this, but there you have it.

These are numbers from after the start of the pundits' revolt over immigration reform, mind you. It's an axiom of American politics, apparently: Come what may, the base will always like George W. Bush.

Comments

I don't think it's necessarily true that the base is still smitten with George Bush. Rather the base believes that such questions represent a choice between Bush and the alternatives, and to the rank and file Republican a decision between Nancy Pelosi and George W. Bush is not really a choice at all.

Posted by Anonymous Conservative | June 5, 2007 3:30 PM

And it really depends on the issue. Foreign policy, yes; immigration, no. It is, of course, highly explicable why we continue to support Bush; we think he's right and Daniel Larison is wrong.

Posted by withywindle | June 5, 2007 3:58 PM

It is, of course, highly explicable why we continue to support Bush; we think he's right and Daniel Larison is wrong.

It's the second clause that so many of us consider to be inexplicable. But that's neither here nor there.

In a two-party system, the default setting for most voters is lesser-evilism. Every American (or at least every American who is aware that their cable TV system carries news channels) intuitively understands that both political parties wield approval ratings as political cudgels. No matter how unhappy voters may be with the President, they won't register their disapproval with a pollster if they believe the opposition is significantly worse.

These poll numbers, on whether the President is leading the party in the right direction, probably reflect the lack of a strong consensus 2008 GOP candidate. If there were a popular party leader who supported a neocon foreign policy AND opposed the immigration bill from the Right, I suspect Bush's numbers would be much, much lower.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | June 5, 2007 4:58 PM

I remember reading an interview with some semi-prominent conservative a while back-- maybe it was Mary Matalin or Peggy Noonan. She said that she had considered herself a liberal, but one formative moment in her leaving was taking a bus trip with a bunch of liberals while in college to go do some good liberal deed. She said, paraphrasing, "I didn't want to be a part of whatever it was that these obnoxious elitists were up to."

At some point, do you just say, count me out of this?

AnonyCon, I disagree with your characterization. The choices were between "Bush leading the GOP in the right direction," or "Bush leading the GOP in the wrong direction." The GOP base's personal antipathy for Nancy Pelosi notwithstanding, she's not that unpopular. And, more importantly, she had nothing to do with the poll question that Ross is discussing. Are you arguing that saying "Bush is leading the GOP in the wrong direction" is viewed by the GOP base as reflecting well on Nancy Pelosi?

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | June 5, 2007 4:59 PM

Maybe it's that, or that GOP voters actually give him some credit for the lack of economic growth and domestic terrorism they've enjoyed.

Posted by Chris | June 5, 2007 5:29 PM

err... that should have read "for the economic growth and lack of domestic terrorism they've enjoyed" -- lest someone read my comment as DeLongian snark.

Posted by Chris | June 5, 2007 5:32 PM

Is it possible that the base also really thinks he's right, especially in foreign policy? I disagree with most of what the guy's done, but I still receive a lot of right-wing e-mails with pictures of West-hating Muslims (their claim, not mine, just to be clear) and titles of "you won't see this in the Liberal American press". A lot of people really think we're at war and we're better on the attack. Again, I disagree, but just as leftist elites can lose touch with the pulse of the country, I fear the same can occur with elites of the right (comparatively speaking, no offense to anyone here).

Posted by Paul | June 5, 2007 6:30 PM

The GOP base is now made up of lots and lots of Southern conservatives. Finding that surprising isn't going to change it.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 5, 2007 6:42 PM

In your diavlog, you mention your fiancé. Congratulations on your engagement!

Posted by Pithlord | June 6, 2007 12:17 AM

I'd like to add something. It is understandable that the GOP base approves of Mr. Bush because they support his signature policies overseas. They might reject everything else he has done, but regard Iraq and "the war on terror" as such transcendently important causes that they are willing to overlook all of these other things. This seeems badly mistaken to me, but that is at least explicable.

The reason that the response to that question amazed me was that it was specifically a question about the direction of the *party*. Usually, in the wake of large-scale electoral defeats and the spectacle of the President berating his core supporters for their bigotry, it is not normal to find a sizeable majority that believes the current party leadership is taking the party in the right direction. If there are comparable numbers for Clinton from June 1995, I would be interested to know what they are.

Posted by Daniel Larison | June 6, 2007 2:42 AM