I think I spot a snag in Karl Rove’s “Permanent Republican Majority”
I think Sam Rosenfeld is asking the wrong question here on the paragraphs he keyed in on from this Time article. Think about this for a minute:
However improbable the odds at this point or modest his short-term goals, aides say, Bush still subscribes to Rove’s long-held dream that his will be the transformational presidency that lays the groundwork for a Republican majority that can endure, as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition did, for a half-century or more. Once he gets past the midterm elections, Bush plans to introduce a concept that, if anything, is even more ambitious than his failed Social Security plan: a grand overhaul that would include not only that program but Medicare and Medicaid as well. Says strategist McKinnon: “He knows that part of what he brings to the presidency is an ability and commitment to chart a long course under public pressure.” The question that will be answered in the coming year is whether America still believes in George Bush enough to follow.
Granted, Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 campaign was a bit lukewarm in showering his vision, a vision that I guess you would have to say is what created this coalition that endured, as this article puts it, for “half-century or more.” But four years into it, his 1936 campaign was pretty up front on what Franklin Roosevelt was doing and where he was taking the country.
Now take a look at Bush. When is he going to “introduce a concept that, if anything, is even more ambitious than his failed Social Security plan”? Why… “once he gets past the midterm elections”!! In the aftermath of the 2004 elections, Bush’s supporters (at the National Review and in the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, and I guess on right wing radio) proclaimed that Bush’s mandate was greater than — say — Ronald Reagan’s because, while Reagan won in a landslide, Bush won with boldness and clarity of vision. None of which worked out well this year because, quite frankly, nobody could really figure out what bold and clear domestic program that Bush supposedly had in the 2004 elections was, and so on a handful of key policies (though, unfortunately, not on bankruptcy reform), the Democrats laughed it off, Bush got himself entangled in paying back the supposed key constituency of his breath-taking 3% victory in the Terri Schivo affair, the Democratic Party realized that if they can’t defend the legacy of FDR with Social Security they have nothing, and Bush’s vision of inept government finally was exposed with Hurricane Katrina.
Why do you suppose Bush would have to unveil his ambitious strategy for reshaping America after and not during the 2006 midterm elections (elections, in theory, being where you put up your idea for America and the other party puts up their idea for America, and may the most popular idea for America win), and why do I figure that the answer to that question sort of scuttles the image of a “Republican majority that can endure, as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition did, for a half-century or more”? (By the way… aren’t we in the midst of a Republican majority that takes us back to Nixon, or if not Nixon than Reagan?)