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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
Unease, a smoldering anger and even fear at being cut out of the loop by Rumsfeld and his Pentagon have been building for months on Capitol Hill, especially in the Senate. Powerful mainstream senators like Warner, Lugar and Roberts are now saying in public things that would have gotten them in boiling hot water only a few weeks ago. These men will still not go as far as McCain or Hagel in blasting administration policy or Rumsfeld forthrightly. But they have come a long way already, baby. Rumsfeld is without a doubt on the skids with them. And the president's evident determination to hang on to "his" Rummy through thick and thin is going to strain relations even more.
The White House and the Pentagon have systematically shut the Senate out of the consultative process on Iraq in a way not seen since World War I. The horrific pictures coming out of Abu Ghraib therefore did not hit a political vacuum or a strong buffer of support for the president and his defense secretary. Instead, they have served, some Senate GOP staffers privately say, to focus and harden fears and resentments that have been building for months.
The House is a tougher nut to crack. Historically, House members usually do not concern themselves with many foreign affairs issues -- with the exception of hot-button ones of particular interest to influential lobbies or groups in their own districts. Also, the GOP majority of recent years under the leadership of Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas has been especially uniform in its views and in harmony with Bush on them. So far, no one there has broken ranks, and there have not been any independent, grim and public expressions of concern from House Republican leaders comparable to what has already been uttered by their Senate counterparts.
But talk to some House staffers who are privy to the thoughts and concerns of their congressmen and sometimes surprising expressions of anger and frustration come forth.
These so far fall into two categories: The first is that the czar, in this case the president, is still wise and good and just, and that it is his pesky advisors who are to blame. A remarkable amount of anger appears to be spreading in GOP House staff circles against Rumsfeld and the supposedly brilliant group of neoconservative intellectuals around him, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith -- those who pushed the conquest and occupation of Iraq so remorselessly yet now appear to have not the slightest clue what to do next.
The second reaction is found less commonly among House staffers but is even more remarkable. That is the expressed belief of Republican conservatives that to retain the power that really matters (their majority in the House, with continuing control over its committees and fiscal powers), they may have to sacrifice the power that they regard as more superficial and transient: Bush's holding on to the White House.
According to this line of thought (and I have been unable to ascertain from staffers how many Republican congressmen hold such a view), Bush, Rumsfeld and their hawks have already made such a mess out of Iraq that the next president, be it Bush or John Kerry, is certain to be on a hiding to nothing as he struggles with the war's consequences next year. Indeed, it is inevitable that there will be a massive popular backlash against the sitting president, Republican or Democrat, come the midterm elections of 2006. Far better, therefore, that Kerry win in November and still be hemmed in on the domestic front by a Republican House majority that is then free of the albatross of Iraq. If Bush wins in November, according to this belief, there is a very real danger that after 12 years the GOP will lose the jewel in its crown -- control of the House -- in 2006.
For the moment, however, members of the House are silent. GOP leaders are keeping their heads down, hoping the whole mess will go away in the next news cycle. Whatever the unease and resentment building against Bush there, he still has several months to rally the faithful, jut his jaw and look manly. House members will not distance themselves from a president who shares their core beliefs before the fall and, even then, only if come September he is looking like as much a lost cause as his father did by that time in his unsuccessful reelection campaign against Bill Clinton in 1992.
