Will Republicans desert Bush?

With US forces in Iraq scheduled to reach full strength under the administration’s ‘surge’ plan this week, the pressure to break with President George Bush’s policy is causing cracks to appear in the Republican caucus on Capitol Hill. It may signal the end of an era.

Since the party’s victory in the 1994 mid-term elections, Republicans have achieved a remarkable degree of political unity in Congress -- a key factor in their subsequent political and legislative successes.  This trend reached its apogee during Bush’s first term, when the Republican leadership worked with the White House to push tax cuts and a series of ‘war on terror’ related policies through Congress.

Yet the spiralling chaos in Iraq -- particularly following the November 2006 elections that returned Congress to Democratic control -- has created overwhelming pressure to break with the president.  The Democrats’ authorisation of a Iraq spending bill in May allowed them to criticise Bush’s management of the war while avoiding charges of failing to support US troops.  Indeed, the meta-poll produced by University of Wisconsin political scientist Charles Franklin’s Political Arithmetic blog now puts the president’s approval rating at a near record-low 31.9%. 

Republican lawmakers are aware of this public disquiet and, with an eye on the 2008 elections, have suggested that they may re-evaluate their backing for Bush’s Iraq policy in September.  But the consequences of fracturing Republican unity will be visible this week: in the difficulty that the White House will face resisting congressional attempts to raise fuel economy standards, and in the president’s flagging efforts to rally his party behind comprehensive immigration reform.