I have to admit, I’m a little surprised (and confused) by the field of Republican presidential candidates making no real effort to offer voters a change from Bush-Cheney. Given that the president is the least popular of any in the modern political era, this shouldn’t be too tricky.
And yet, the GOP field seems confused. Two weeks ago, it was Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney arguing over who agrees with Bush’s foreign policy the most.
Today, Paul Krugman notes that it’s part of a larger trend.
On one side, the Democrats are all promising to get out of Iraq and offering strongly progressive policies on taxes, health care and the environment. That’s understandable: the public hates the war, and public opinion seems to be running in a progressive direction.
What seems harder to understand is what’s happening on the other side — the degree to which almost all the Republicans have chosen to align themselves closely with the unpopular policies of an unpopular president. And I’m not just talking about their continuing enthusiasm for the Iraq war. The G.O.P. candidates are equally supportive of Bush economic policies.
On the one hand, the Republican field seems to be at least tacitly aware of their political predicament. Most of the time, these guys have been told not to utter the president’s name at all. At the most recent Republican debate, not a single GOP hopeful used the word “Bush” over the course of the 90-minute event.
But then there’s the other hand, with a realization that doesn’t make any sense: the public is clamoring for change, and the Republican presidential candidates are offering more of the same.
Obviously, Bush maintains some popularity with the far-right Republican base, so it stands to reason that his would-be successors would be reluctant to criticize him during the primary fight.
But Krugman noted that they’re not only missing an opportunity here, they’re also reinforcing the belief that they will “cower before the power of movement conservatism,” even if that means embracing failed policies. He uses John McCain as Exhibit A.
Mr. McCain’s lingering reputation as a maverick straight talker comes largely from his opposition to the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which he said at the time were too big and too skewed to the rich. Those objections would seem to have even more force now, with America facing the costs of an expensive war — which Mr. McCain fervently supports — and with income inequality reaching new heights.
But Mr. McCain now says that he supports making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Not only that: he’s become a convert to crude supply-side economics, claiming that cutting taxes actually increases revenues. That’s an assertion even Bush administration officials concede is false.
Oh, and what about his earlier opposition to tax cuts? Mr. McCain now says he opposed the Bush tax cuts only because they weren’t offset by spending cuts.
Aside from the logical problem here — if tax cuts increase revenue, why do they need to be offset? — even a cursory look at what Mr. McCain said at the time shows that he’s trying to rewrite history: he actually attacked the Bush tax cuts from the left, not the right. But he has clearly decided that it’s better to fib about his record than admit that he wasn’t always a rock-solid economic conservative.
So what does the conversion of Mr. McCain into an avowed believer in voodoo economics — and the comparable conversions of Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani — tell us? That bitter partisanship and political polarization aren’t going away anytime soon.
It’s also one reason I remain cautiously optimistic about Democrats’ chances in November — very few Americans want four more years similar to the last seven, but that’s exactly what the Republican field is offering.