President Bushes losing formulas's driving away Republicans

Time offers and interesting article today. Its definitely worth a read.

As we head into the midterm elections it appears that rank and file Republicans are starting to abandon the president and Republican leaders that are sticking with the losing forumula's of the President.

63% of Americans feel that the President has mis-handled the war in Iraq and 51% feel that he hasn't executed the war on terrorism well.

I think this in part due to the fact that the President's formula included a strong offense in Iraq and a defensive position in the war on terror. As a country we have drawn ourselves in with fear mongering and worked to raise our defenses against future terrorist strikes. Simultaneously, we've lashed out with a sabre against Iraq. The sabre cut off the head of Iraq's former leadership, but did not win hearts and minds in the region as we put up barriers that repelled potential friends in the middle east.

So now, we are reaping the fruits of our ill formed labors. The Iraqi people not having a friendly shoulder to turn to in the West and having no stable local allies have begun to fall under the weight of a terrorist infusion that invaded their country shortly after our own invasion.

And what of the terrorists that scared us so badly in the first place? Like a hydra they have received a few bruisings, but raised their many headed body to taunt and strike back at us again.

The British are starting to call Tony Blair to account for a lack of a winning formula. I almost sense an irony here as it sometimes appeared that he worked to keep President Bush somewhat in check over the last few years. But no blatant failure goes unchecked in politics, and that goes double when a party runs out of scape goats.

The Republican party has preached to their principles using a clear voice for almost a decade. Unfortunately, President Bush has been systematically proving his inability to deliver the results preached by those principles. I suspect his failures may set the Republican party back more than the Watergate scandal of the early seventies.

The republicans have raised the deficit, raised governmental spending, increased the size of the governmental bureacracy, and then demonstrated its severe incompetence in the preparation of Hurricane Katrina and surprised the world with its void of concern and humanity for American citizens.

President Bush would argue that to pull out of Iraq now would be an act that would invalidate the sacrifice of over 2600 service men and women of the US armed forces. This is a false argument. His inability to lead effectively and achieve results is the only attempt at invalidation. Those service men and women lost their lives defending the constitution and following orders set into motion by the President. Their actions won the war in Iraq. The President's actions have lost the peace and his inability to react to changes in developments in Iraq lose the peace everyday.

The peace can still be won and it can be won whether or not US troops redeploy home to the United States. The peace can be won as soon as we as a country start waging and offense on terror and not reacting defensively. The first offensive move on terror starts with demonstrating that we are not afraid and that the terrorists cannot change our good will our intentions or our ability to befriend and partner with any people anywhere in the world.

Today, the terrorists and President Bush speak differently but chase the same goal. They are maintaining and increasing their political power through fear. President Bush in the early days after 9/11 talked the talk that could have steered our country away from this trap. However, he did not walk the walk, and these days he doesn't even talk a good game.

This is why elected Repbulicans are pulling away from the White House political strategies and Rhetoric and even more so, this is why so many grass roots Republicans are identifying themselves with independents and libertarians and even some democrats. The rank and file elected Republicans are hearing and feeling this from their evaporating political base and thus the weaknesses in the Republican levy are starting to show signs of leakage. The drop of water that cracked the levy can probably even be traced back to Hurricane Katrina.

This is really no surpise as many many people were disgusted with the failure of the national government to protect its citizens and with the failure of the national government to work effectively with state and local leaders. As the levies broke in New Orleans the first cracks in the Republican levies started to form. The midterm election is just a few months away and accountability for actions and failures in the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina and even the war on terrorism will become accountable. Its not the soldiers that will be voted out of office, its the politicians that failed to successfully utilize the power of the United States.