Part 2: Bush's Sinking Popularity And Division Within GOP
It's not clear, though, that Republican lawmakers interpret Bush's loss on Social Security as a sign that the public doesn't want conservative policies. Indeed, pollsters are of mixed opinion on whether Bush's approval ratings matter to Congress at all.
Approval ratings are by nature volatile. The public's opinion of a politician goes up or down over time and the poll numbers don't always reflect failure. Members of Congress understand this, says Gallup's Newport. He points out that Congress members don't usually decide whether to support a president based on approval ratings. What's more, says Karlyn Bowman, a polling expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, the public has recently lost confidence in all American institutions.
Surveys show that Americans aren't huge fans of either Republicans or Democrats in Congress. In recent months, approval ratings for the military -- consistently the most beloved institution in government -- have also been on the decline. If members of Congress are feeling the heat, they're not likely to balk at the president's low rating.
Moreover, Republicans in Congress have been subject to tremendous pressure from extremists urging them to simply ignore surveys charting American opinion. Around the time of the Schiavo case, when polls showed that the overwhelming majority of Americans rejected federal intervention to keep the brain-damaged woman alive, leaders of the religious right insisted that public opinion didn't matter because the public simply didn't understand the issues involved in the case.
They're at it again. In an e-mail to supporters sent on Wednesday, Tony Perkins, who heads the Family Research Council, wrote that a recent Washington Post poll showing that Americans oppose the elimination of the Senate filibuster should not be trusted, as it reflected the Post's biased liberal view. Gary Bauer told his supporters the same thing: "The Post hopes the poll will buckle Republican knees, particularly those of moderates who want to be thought of as independent-thinking," the former presidential candidate wrote in his daily newsletter on Tuesday. Citing a poll conducted by the Republican National Committee that's more supportive of his own position, Bauer concluded that "there is no reason for any Republican senator to 'wimp out'" on the filibuster vote.
Teixeira, however, believes that Bush's failure on Social Security and his attendant low approval ratings do upset the conventional Washington wisdom about the president -- the thought that "this is a guy who always wins." He says Bush's low ratings may already be shaping actions on Capitol Hill.
In March, for instance, Senate Republicans disappointed the White House by proposing a budget that would reduce the size of future tax cuts over the next five years (instead of the $100 billion in tax cuts that the White House wanted, the senators proposed $70 billion). Then, seven Republican senators crossed the partisan divide to join Democrats in rejecting the Bush administration's proposed cuts to the Medicare program. These seven -- Gordon Smith of Oregon, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine -- are all known as moderates in the GOP (what extremists sometimes call RINOs, Republicans in name only).
The cuts they rejected have been added back to the final budget bill, which was drafted in a conference committee composed of Republican leaders from the House and Senate and which will come up for a final vote in both chambers of Congress soon -- as soon as Friday. It's not clear if the moderates will risk angering their party by voting down the final bill. Already, Smith has threatened to vote against it. Whatever they do will be a good indication of their fealty to Bush.
Recently, signs of Republican opposition to Bush's plans have become even more pronounced. Last week, in a surprise move, one Republican senator -- Ohio's George Voinovich -- held up Bush's nomination of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. Voinovich has since been joined by a handful of other Republicans who've expressed opposition to Bolton. And several Republicans have been backing away from Bush on his prized Social Security plan.
At a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, Wyoming's Craig Thomas, who isn't anywhere near his party's moderate wing, wondered whether it was a good idea to spend the trillions necessary to implement Bush's plan. And Snowe, who's long signaled her opposition to the Bush effort, stood firm. "Social Security became the bedrock of support for seniors in my state precisely because it's defined and guaranteed," she said. "What cost and what risk is it worth to erode the guaranteed benefit?"
Jeffrey Bell, a Republican political consultant, says that if Bush holds on to his Social Security plan too long, or if he vows to pass it after the 2006 election, Democrats will make it a key issue against Republicans at the polls -- and Republican lawmakers aren't looking forward to running on the platform of Social Security privatization. Bush needs to find a way to back out of the plan without causing trouble for his party, Bell says. "Part of what I'm saying is that Bush had a very successful first term in terms of his domestic legislation, but he isn't going to run again, and he doesn't have quite as much clout over his party members as he once did. It's important for him to know how to take a defeat."
However, Bell doesn't think that Bush's low poll numbers signify a greater problem for the GOP's agenda. He believes, for instance, that Bush may still be able to encourage Congress to approve his tax-cutting plans, including his effort to repeal the estate tax.
But Bell and other Republicans admit that even getting tax cuts through Congress won't be a slam dunk. Bush, after all, has spent a great deal of his time recently pointing out the fiscal imbalances in the Social Security program. In calling for more tax cuts, Bush will need to defend himself against the charge that he's bankrupting the federal government. "It doesn't seem appropriate to point out those problems [in Social Security] and then to say, By the way, please make my tax cuts permanent," Bell says.
Like many Republicans, Bell argues that even if Bush faces difficulty with Congress on his domestic plans, what the president does have going for him is his foreign policy. Recent opinion surveys, however, tell another story. Despite the White House's claim of victory in Iraq, Americans don't like how Bush is handling the war and don't believe the war was worth the cost. In most polls, between 40 and 50 percent of Americans say they approve of the war effort; majorities usually say they disapprove of it.
The reason is obvious, says Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics: "A lot of Americans are dying there and people want out."
Americans also don't seem to believe Bush's assurance that democratization of the Middle East is necessarily connected to terrorism on American soil. The public may credit Bush with positive developments in Iraq, but they'll do it the same way that they "gave Jimmy Carter credit for the Camp David Peace Accords -- it pleases them, but it doesn't affect their immediate concerns," Sabato says.
This development has got to be distressing to the White House. For two years, Bush has insisted that his Iraq policy would, in the long run, prove successful. Many in the White House must have expected the public to react positively to Bush when positive signs arose in Iraq. Indeed, after Iraq's elections, Republicans couldn't take enough credit for the wide turnout of Iraqi voters. Remember all those purple-fingered lawmakers at the State of the Union address?
It's turned out that success in Iraq hasn't bolstered support for Bush. The election only prompted Americans to question whether now is the time to bring American troops home. And even the success of the election is beginning to look illusory. As new horrors are emerging from Iraq, the war has once more become Bush's albatross.
So if Bush can't count on gaining the public's support even when things go well in Iraq, what can he count on? Not much, according to Teixeira. "You look forward and to see what's going to take them over that funk, and you do wonder. Is the economy going to come back strong? Probably not. Is he going to be bailed out by the outbreak of democracy in the Middle East? Well, obviously not. The election already happened and his ratings on Iraq have gone nowhere. It's hard to see where he can win."
None of this is to suggest that Bush is destined to fail. He and his political strategist Karl Rove have a history of performing legislative magic tricks. They've outmaneuvered Democrats rather brilliantly for the last five years. And both Republican and Democratic political consultants caution that fortunes change quickly in Washington. Soon, the Republicans may win their effort to eliminate the Senate's filibuster on judicial nominees, or they may pass Bush's energy bill or eliminate the estate tax or claim victory on any one of several policy goals they have for this legislative term.
At the same time, Democrats are not doing particularly well. So far, their primary weapon has been their united stance in opposition to Bush. Bell, the Republican pollster, says Democrats should get some credit for this; it's a smart strategy. And liberals are more than willing to take the credit.
"Frankly our expectation was that with all three branches of government held by the Republicans, we would be in a poor position," says Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org. But "working together with a lot of groups, we've held the line," he says. "It's been quite a surprising and encouraging and hopeful thing." |
