Bush’s policies on civil liberties in the US could also being hurting him with the general public, but that is less clear to me. Phone tapping, holding people without arrest, torture.

The majority of polls indicate that either the public doesn’t care about these issues or outright supports the President’s positions. As much as libertarians would like this set of issues to be hurting the President, it doesn’t seem as if it is quite doing that.

As you said, it isn’t “corruption” or “overspending” or “not being conservative enough” that did Bush in (which much of the broad right appears to believe - or wants to believe), it’s the war and, to a lesser extent, gas prices that were the fatal blows.

I think of this as part of the war in Iraq, but really it is something different.

This was one area where McCain distinguished himself, although weakly IMHO, and which I do support him.

The general population does not care very much about George Bush’s spending, his drug program for seniors or his weakness on a bunch of social conservative issues.

And they certainly are not being driven to the democrats over these issues, where they will only get more of the same.

The general population hates bush for mostly for the war and related side effects ( such as high gas prices).

Yes, it was, and still is, the f-ing war.

Bottom line, it is the war.

This is correct as far as it goes, but I am not sure that it goes all the way to the bottom line. Even if not for the war, would the Republicans not still have lost in 2006?

In every republic and parliamentary monarchy in the West of which I know, every party in power inevitably accumulates a growing weight of opposition over time. People accrete to the Democratic party precisely because they feel dissatisfied with the Republican. This is what makes two-party politics inherently cyclical.

Republicans were in ascendancy 1994–2006. Like the tide, it was time for the wheel to turn. The war gives the appearance of motive to a motion that was already underway. Indeed, one could argue that it was the war that prevented the wheel from turning two years earlier, in 2004.

Howard

“Bush’s unpopularity” is not an issue. Why is Bush unpopular? The war, mostly.

“Democratic enthusiasm/hunger to reclaim the Oval Office” is not an issue. Why are they more enthusiantisc than normal? Because they HATE, HATE, HATE the war. Or better yet, they see the public hates the war and they smell blood in the water.

Immigration? Please, McCain is the open border water boy for the Republicans party. McCain is the Republican neutralizer on this issue (assuming it is a loser, which it is not).

Yeah, Bush was a big spender but that is not driving moderates and other Republicans to democrats, as they are even bigger spenders (other than for the war).

The economy is still pretty good and was great in 2006, but the Republicans still lost.

Bottom line, it is the war.

He will have lost on the war, and the war alone.

I mean really, I’ll always love to laugh at Hewitt, but the guy did the thing right. It was obvious conservatism was screwed anyway in ‘08 back when he picked Romney. With McCain and Giuiani the options at the time, it made sense, at least from the blinkered Bush-supporting perspective he and all the recent Romney desperadoes were coming from.

Of course, conservatism was screwed by then because conservatism has been screwed ever since the “conservatives” picked Bush in ‘99 (yes, and for years and decades before that, and I don’t unequivocally endorse any poltiical development since magna carta, but you know what I mean…in the lowest depth a lower deep opens..) but that leads me back to the original point: they made the Right safe for Bushism and now they don’t understand why their Reagan stool didn’t work out for them.

They’re not going to learn the lesson, of course. They’ll just see themselves as the beautiful losers in a nefarious liberal capture of their beloved party, and vow to fight on until the glorious day when they get an imperialism-immigration-insolvency statesman who isn’t so rude to them. And then won’t David Brooks be sorry!

Not too long ago I said: “I can think of few things more terrifying from a policy perspective than the prospect of another administration that marries aggressive hegemonic foreign policy with saccharine moralising pseudo-piety and policies that encourage mass immigration.” I have repeatedly argued in recent weeks that McCain represents continuity with the current administration, and it is impossible to think that this counts as anything other than a harsh criticism coming from me. McCain’s Russophobia, his interventionist meddling in the Caucasus, his jingoism and his warmongering are all appalling to me, as I have made clear on many occasions. The frequency with which I use the word “horrifying” in connection with McCain’s name should earn me some kind of decoration from the anti-McCain brigades. I’m sure I could dig up more from the archives, but you get the point. The fact that I haven’t bought into Romney’s fraud and don’t accept the standard assessment (disproved tonight) that he is the “most viable conservative” in the race does not mean that I am in any way sympathetic to McCain. I clearly oppose the main things McCain and the modern GOP actually stand for, so I’m not sure where anyone could get the idea that I have been giving McCain an easy time. Romney’s candidacy offers a false alternative to McCain, whose views I once again described as “horrid” just days ago. Satisfied?