Iraq disaster finally caught up with Bush

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http://www.suntimes.com/news/greeley/131251,CST-EDT-greel10.article



Even the "born-agains" may have been part of the Democratic revolution last Tuesday. In its final pre-election poll, the New York Times, with its usual religious tin ear, presented but did not comment on a graph that showed this Republican "base" was evenly split between Democrats and Republicans in its voting plans. While exit poll data is necessary to confirm this finding, it was a strong hint that the house of cards Karl Rove had created was falling apart.

In our book on conservative Christians, Professor Michael Hout from Berkeley and I questioned whether the "evangelicals" were a strong component of Rove's coalition. We had calculated that they added at the most one or two percentage points to the "base" provided by the white Protestant population. The influence of their religious leadership on Republican politics was based on what former House Speaker "Tip" O'Neill called "shadows and mirrors."

Another component of Rove's alleged magic was "patriotism" and fear of the terrorists. President Bush claimed during his madcap campaign that the Democrats were in fact on the side of the terrorists, creating much enthusiasm among the partisan crowds to which he spoke. As Abraham Lincoln may have said, you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people, all the time. Enough of the people were fed up with the Iraq war that Rove's black magic did not work like it used to. It took a long time for the electorate to move beyond the fear and anger of the World Trade Center attack, but move it finally did. snip

The new Democratic Congress must resist the temptation to be "responsible" on Iraq. They were not elected to be responsible. They were elected to end this stupid and immoral war. James Baker, who in Florida in 2000 showed how skilled he is in turning defeat into victory, may well provide a face-saving way out for the president, but even that will not hide the truth that his legacy will be the memory of a scarred battleground presidency, devastated by vicious partisan politics and a deadly blend of ignorance, arrogance and incompetence.

[Submariner]

1. 2 PERCENTERS?

I thought the evangelical wingnuts were about 15-20%. This small number helps me believe we can strengthen our base as we move towards building up a bigger senate majority in 2008.