If Saddam's sentencing date was deliberately penciled in two days before Americans cast their ballots in the midterm elections to influence voting, then it was a waste of time. For the Republicans the public pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction and even the imminent demise of the former Iraqi leader isn’t likely to halt its trajectory.
Far more pressing for ordinary Americans are subjects such as the 3,000 Coalition soldiers who have lost their lives in Iraq with little to show for their sacrifice, the drop in real estate values, the high cost of gasoline, an economic slowdown and the unremitting scandals plaguing the GOP as well as friends of the White House.
The latest blow to Republican ambitions was the dismissal of the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals — a body close to George W. Bush — for having gay sex and buying drugs. This comes hard on the heels of news about the Republican Congressman Mark Foley’s unusual interest in young congressional pages even while he was campaigning to save youth from exploitation by adults.
Apart from a faux pas by former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who was forced to apologize for telling a youthful audience to study hard else they might end up serving in Iraq, there is little good news for Republicans.
A White House-authorized bipartisan committee headed by James Baker III — a solid and widely-respected politician who served under Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush — is due to report that America’s original goals in Iraq are not achievable and one of the routes to stabilizing that country is via Tehran and Damascus. This is not something that the US president ever hoped to hear.
That news was followed by a New York Times expose of a leaked pessimistic Central Command briefing indicating the conflict now borders on critical and is fast disintegrating into chaos.
And according to an article by David Rose in Vanity Fair even his neo-conservative backers are deserting the sinking ship. “As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war’s neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush Administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence,” writes Rose.
One of the war’s main protagonists, who formerly headed the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle holds the president responsible for US failures and admits that if he had possessed a crystal ball he would not had advocated invading Iraq.
Another necon hawk, Kenneth Adelman, said “the policy can be absolutely right, and noble, beneficial, but if you can’t execute it, it’s useless — you just have to put it in the drawer marked ‘can’t do’.”
David Frum, a former White House speechwriter, said “the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas.”
So the neo-cons have turned but what about Bush’s most ardent support base the US military? Here again it’s more bad news. An editorial in the Army Times calls for the sacking of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld despite the president’s insistence that both Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney are set to remain in his government until the bitter end when he makes way for the inevitable newcomer in January 2009.
The article maintains that Rumsfeld has “lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large...And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.”
Even one of Bush’s most trusted military leaders Gen. John Abizaid, who heads the US Central Military Command, is gloomy. “I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it...and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war.”
Overall it’s far from a pretty picture. It took them a long time but even the American public is beginning finally to get the message.
Wayne Allyn Root, a Las Vegas prognosticator and author of “Millionaire Republican” is famous for his accurate political predictions. Root believes the Democrats will succeed in wresting the House from the Republicans with as many as 18-20 new seats but are unlikely to take control of the Senate. Root correctly predicted the outcome of the 2003 presidential election but will he be right on this occasion?
Last month, a Newsweek poll put the president’s approval rating at a record low of 33 percent with 42 percent of Americans now believing the Democrats have the edge when it comes to possessing moral values as opposed to 36 percent, who say they trust Republicans on this issue. But that was before the Ted Haggard scandal and the attacks on the president’s judgment by neoconservative former stalwarts and the Army Times.
Today’s outcome is hard to predict and nothing is assured. Much depends on voter turnout. Predictions of a low Republican turnout may or may not be realized. Other predictions put independents set to pick-up protest votes as the big winners. The result also depends upon the voters’ most heartfelt concerns and whether Iraq figures as high on the public scale as pundits think. If it does, then it’s difficult to see how Republicans will hold on to Senate.
If the GOP loses both the Senate and the House, the White House is in for a hard time not least an investigation into its conduct of the war, while George W. Bush might arguably have to face impeachment proceedings like his predecessor. At the very least, he will have a fight on his hands when trying to pass unpopular laws or attempting to wrest more control for the executive branch.
Anything that would take the wind out of the aggressive sails of this administration is sorely needed if there is to be some semblance of global stability. A weakened White House would have little choice but to talk to Iran and North Korea and plan to exit Iraq. Over to you America! Don’t let us down!
