The Republican Party is among the war's victims

March 22, 2007
The Republican Party is among the war's victims

For a moment the 2004 election seemed to justify this vision, with an improved Republican performance among blacks, Hispanics and, particularly, women. But by 2007 the Democrats were back in control of both chambers of Congress and itching to retake the White House. Fully 40% of Republicans believe that the Democrats will capture the presidency in 2008, compared with 12% of Democrats who think the Republicans will hang on to it. Ken Mehlman, the party chairman who oversaw the 2004 triumph, is now advising hedge funds on how to deal with a Democratic-leaning world. The Republicans may well be left with nothing except the solid South and a few patches of the Midwest, just as the Democrats were at the end of the 19th century.

Stephen Bainbridge, a conservative academic at the University of California, Los Angeles, has argued that Mr Bush's decision to go to war has "pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent." William Buckley, the pope of the conservative movement, says that if Mr Bush were the leader of a parliamentary system, "it would be expected that he would retire or resign". Richard Viguerie, another conservative veteran, says that "I've never seen conservatives so downright fed-up as they are today."

The war has eviscerated the administration's reputation for competence—and with it the idea that the Republicans have an inherent advantage as the "Daddy" party. An administration that once boasted about its clutch of CEOs will forever be remembered for phrases such as "slam dunk" (of WMD intelligence) and "Mission Accomplished", or for disasters such as the failure to prepare Walter Reed and other military hospitals to deal with casualties. The same CBS News/New York Times poll found that only 28% of people approved of Mr Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq.